Selecting the Right B2B eCommerce Platform

Choosing a development partner for building a B2B eCommerce platform isn’t the same as buying a car or even a home when comparing features, design, efficiencies and prices can guide the process. The process of choosing a new B2B platform more closely resembles building a custom home that’s easy to expand in the future as a family and financial strength grow. However, the problem of building a B2B platform is that there are so many software options and features — some of which apply and some that don’t — that complicate the decision. When buying products like cars, it’s easy to compare features because they all do essentially the same things, but comparing eCommerce platforms is like comparing apples to watermelons.

However, the primary force in determining which platform to use is really quite simple: How customizable is it? Customizable platforms are scalable, flexible, responsive to design changes, display well on multiple devices and allow planners to integrate vast capabilities based on their industry- or company-specific needs. 75 percent of Internet users prefer mobile-friendly sites — including B2B customers — and 96 percent have found sites that didn’t function well on mobile devices. Such a platform allows B2B companies to build a solution for now and the future, address evolving digital trends and customize Web abilities based on the device that each person uses to visit a website or Web page. The obligation to provide better user experiences, more features, better tracking and personalization will continue to grow in importance as competitors adopt these processes and B2B platforms increasingly become multichannel resources for their customers.

75 percent of Internet users prefer mobile-friendly sites — including B2B customers — and 96 percent have found sites that didn’t function well on mobile devices.

Google reported in 2020 that more searches now come from tablets and smartphones than stationary computers. The United States and Japan lead this trend, but other countries are quickly gaining ground. Managing mobile marketing, developing customized profiles for customers, simplifying B2B ordering, enabling mobile payments and integrating with back-office software from anywhere are just a few of the long-term benefits of customizing a sales platform.

Decision-makers grow increasingly frustrated by the speed of evolving marketing best practices and want to build long-term solutions that adapt, integrate and expand as business increases. Previous experience shows that new developments can generate as many problems as they solve, but customizations simplify the process, provide a better path to training staff and handling problems and often generate error-free integrations. Although the solutions to the operational and marketing dilemma of building a new platform involve many areas that must change over time, one predominant advantage is choosing a highly customizable B2B eCommerce platform. Selecting the right platform makes evolving a routine process, and the best developers involve B2B teams in the planning process of building the business case user interface and user experience, automating and integrating back-office integrations and providing user-friendly fulfillment processes such as custom tax calculators, shipping integrations and processes that haven’t yet been conceived.

The right platform should have a robust API layer that allows new customizations and features to be added. This integration layer can add more features than any software currently offers out-of-the-box. Building a strong brand requires strong solutions, and if a company’s software isn’t up to the job, it’s time to consider a major overhaul that begins with platform choice. Customizations can generate sales leads, shorten sales cycles, offer mobile price quotes, move backlogged or out-of-date inventory, connect with customers to build long-term business associations and eliminate ordering errors.

Making a Business Case for Change

Making an organized business case for changing platforms might not be popular among staff members and executive decision-makers who worry about the economy, development costs, planning problems and temporary upheavals that could argue for keeping the current system, but time after time, companies have failed or limited their growth by not embracing new technologies and business trends before younger, technologically savvy customers migrate to competitors who better understand what they want. Think with Google offers some persuasive and compelling statistical insights:

• Almost half of B2B researchers are now Millennials
• C-suite senior executives approve 64 percent of deals, but 24 percent of junior staff make buying decisions.
• Millennials are rapidly moving into influential positions due to their computing skills and understanding of technology and social influences.
• About 57 percent of buyers have already researched a company before visiting a B2B website so monitoring online reputations and connecting through other channels are increasingly important for B2B companies.

Many B2B stakeholders recognize these new realities, however. About 97 percent of marketers admit that more skills are needed in the B2B sector, and 97 percent also reveal that they are doing new things to bolster sales. 62 percent of hiring managers in marketing are focusing on hiring younger staff who better understand new technologies. Although securing a mandate for change and initiating a business case analysis for changing a B2B eCommerce platforms are difficult without the right development partner, there are plenty of compelling reasons to do so. Best strategies for making a business case for platform changes that enable greater customization include:

• Increasing company abilities to target audiences for personalized marketing, website experiences and multichannel interaction
• Collaborating with business associates and providing customers with access to their resources
• Crafting custom solutions to business problems
• Generating more qualified leads
• Expanding the sales funnel to external links and connections

• Virtually unlimited indirect benefits for greater management efficiency
• Speeding orders, payments, price quotes, custom pricing and targeted marketing
• Exchanging information seamlessly among multiple stakeholders
• Speeding development by adopting an agile project management approach
• Ability to add integrations from open source software, third-party consultants, proprietary customer apps and other technology advances

Proactive Problem Solving over Responding to Problems

It’s really a simple matter of finding a solutions provider instead of a service provider. Thousands of vendors offer service, but these always come with built-in obsolescence. In building a business case for change, it’s important to follow a logical process that includes:

• Outlining the company’s short- and long-term goals and building a brand that can fulfill the company’s vision, mission statement, targeting strategy and internal narrative
• Defining immediate operational requirements and desired upgrades
• Estimating development costs versus ROI
• Assessing current and future integration needs
• Choosing the best platform to resolve the quandary of needing rapid customizations
• Planning and implementing an eCommerce makeover

Justifying the need for strategic change is crucial to the strategy, but the best business decisions always fulfill company needs. The first step of building a case for a new B2B platform begins by finding a better solution that offers the following benefits:

• A product that will create a long-term development solution instead of one that provides just a few customizations that are currently popular
• A platform that integrates complex and custom features throughout the organization and its connection channels
• Cost transparency because many providers not only charge licensing fees but also maintenance and transactional fees
• An API layer that allows easy cross-channel integrations
• Solutions that are modular, flexible and scalable

The second step involves delving more deeply into the platform vendor’s business psyche or soul. Ask and answer these questions before choosing a platform that will guide a company for decades:

• Does the vendor understand the company’s business model and marketing imperatives and have the data to back up those claims?
• How strongly does it appear that the vendor is just trying to sell software instead of finding a solution?
• Does the vendor’s team work well with others and allow stakeholder input from internal IT teams, marketing departments, design and development staff and outside consultants?
• Does the vendor insist on doing all the building work despite allowing some degree of design input?
• Does the vendor allow internal teams into the nuts-and-bolts processes of building the platform where they can jointly design and build the platform, learn how to operate it and troubleshoot any problems that develop after implementation?
• How comprehensively do the lifecycle and billing processes manage project risks?

Red flags arise when the answers to these questions show reticence for collaborations, reveal proprietary attitudes about the vendor’s software development processes or indicate hidden agendas. Any of these inclinations might mean that the vendor is playing what essentially amounts to the long business con where the vendor makes its services indispensable and puts companies in digital jeopardy. Without a clear collaborative development process, B2B companies can easily be extorted through increased maintenance costs, burdensome transaction fees and expensive training services. The platform might not be fully customizable and have a built-in expiration date in today’s rapidly evolving markets.

Promoting the Value of Customizations

Not all people who are involved in B2B operations are completely convinced of the value of customizations in today’s marketing because many companies still operate with purchase orders, proposals, bids and negotiations. However, building the value of a scalable, customizable B2B platform — regardless of the business model — can persuade even the most conservative stakeholder when the benefits involve his or her particular area of company operations. Customizable and scalable platforms deliver benefits that cross multiple business channels, internal processes, customer profiles and third-party associates. The benefits of implementing a customizable B2B platform include:

Customizations offer something for everyone within a B2B organization, so just as if profiling a customer, advocates for changing the company’s platform can tailor their arguments based on each decision-maker’s vested interests.

Tips For Choosing the Right B2B eCommerce Platform

Clarity Ventures involves your company’s stakeholders at every level and routinely offers transparency, collaborative development, case studies and development work through our trusted business associates like Clarity’s popular eCommerce platform for business. Our team can make building a platform from inception or integrating a new feature into an existing platform a great development experience that provides great user experiences to each customer and stakeholder. Call or contact us today for a consultation, RFI or RFQ to address your concerns about building trust and cultivating a long-term eCommerce development partner.

• B2B eCommerce Guide - Executive Summary
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Project Approach
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Website Functionality & Customizations
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Core Business Features
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Custom Business Features
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Back-Office Core Features
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Back-Office Custom Features
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Design and Your Company’s Reputation
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Custom UI / UX
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Wireframes & Workflows
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Design Mockups
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Solution Checklist
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Online Payments
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Purchase on Account
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Shipping & Handling
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Taxes
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Deployment Architecture
• B2B eCommerce Guide - How to Build Your Team
• B2B eCommerce Guide - Selecting the Right Platform