Klaus Staubitzer, chief procurement officer and head of supply chain, Siemens AG

“Recent events, like the Covid-19 pandemic and focus on sustainability, have given us the opportunity to establish procurement and supply chain as a key value function instead of a simple support function,” Klaus Staubitzer, the chief procurement officer and head of supply chain at technology and engineering giant Siemens AG, says in a new report on procurement industry trends from Economist Impact and business software company SAP SE.

But the report notes that living up to that “key value” provider role isn’t easy and requires more coordination among procurement and other business departments as companies deal with ongoing supply chain threats, such as the armed conflicts in sea lanes that arose after the pandemic.

The report, “Across the procurement-verse: changing trends in the procurement function,” is based on a first-quarter 2024 global survey of 2,307 senior executives across various business operations, including supply chains, financial management and human resources as well as procurement.

The report asserts that while most executives recognize that procurement departments have made notable strides in collaboration with other departments, “procurement teams have considerable room to improve collaboration skills.”

“While 75% of executives agree that procurement collaborates effectively with the business on issues of strategic importance (up from 53% last year), only a fraction of these (18%) have high confidence in procurement doing so, and only 14% have high confidence in the application of procurement insights across the organization,” the report says. “Procurement has yet to gain the full trust of stakeholders in this area.”

The report, citing crucial trends in AI and supply chain diversification, also asserts:

• Procurement’s success in digitalization increasingly rests on its ability to adopt and master emerging technologies.

“Accelerating digitalization is the highest procurement priority for the majority of respondent organizations over the next 12-18 months, and AI adoption is a centerpiece of these efforts, cited by 44% as a top technology priority,” the report says. “The respondents make clear AI should play a key role in improving procurement process automation.”

• Procurement teams are seeking a balance between centralized and decentralized operating models.

Asked about procurement operating model changes in the next 12-18 months, survey respondents said their intentions were roughly evenly split between two directions: “One is increasing the role of centers of excellence (CoEs), which support best practices in strategic sourcing, knowledge management, performance tracking and other areas. The other is adopting a center-led model, in which the central procurement team makes decisions in key areas while leaving business units to decide on unit-specific procurement matters. CoEs complement and support a center-led approach.”

• Businesses look to reduce supply chain risk in the long term by prioritizing supplier diversification — a priority cited by 40% of surveyed executives.

“In the shorter term, meanwhile, companies are putting stronger emphasis on supply-base consolidation (26% in 2024 v. 10% in 2023) given the push to build trusted relationships to overcome supply-chain challenges,” the report says.

Procurement and supply chain teams are also using new technology applications to improve how they ensure getting the right products for their organizations.

Pushing procurement’s more valuable role

For example, the report notes that Siemens uses “a digital twin (a digital model of a real-world product, object or process) to analyze, with precision, the material cost of the parts it purchases and how they are produced.”

The report adds that Staubitzer’s  team at Siemens now also uses the tool to determine the CO2 emissions of those parts as well as the carbon footprint of the supplier’s entire operations. The survey uncovered a similar trend, noting that 46% of CPOs “prioritize carbon footprint mitigation, more than any of their counterparts.”

“Our suppliers are sometimes surprised that we have a better breakdown of these details than they have from their own calculations,” Staubitzer says.

Roman Belotserkovskiy, a partner in the Austin, Texas, office of the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., says the inflation trends in recent years have provided an opportunity for procurement teams to demonstrate their value and increase their prominence.

“CPOs who did well are those who went and found new sources of supply or who focused on protecting revenues or margin, rather than focusing exclusively on cost,” he says in the report.

Belotserkovskiy has also observed an increase in the number of CPOs presenting to their board of directors — another sign of increased prominence.

“That was very rare two or three years ago,” he says.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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Michael Vax

Repeat business drives a substantial portion of the revenue in a B2B company. You need to make re-ordering as convenient as possible.

How do we achieve that in B2B implementation?

Firstly, it’s important to note several differences in the order management implementation of “My Orders” in B2B ecommerce compared to B2C. In B2C, “My Orders” refers specifically to orders placed by the logged-in user. In contrast, in B2B, the list should display orders placed by all users within the same business or, in the case of a large organization, by all users within the same business unit.

Additionally, since the list of orders could be extensive, searching and filtering past orders is the must-have functionality in B2B. Make sure that customers can filter by date and employee who placed the order. Let them search by product name, attributes, text in the description, and category. For large customers, allow search by an SKU number used in the customer’s procurement system.

Make it easy to repeat the entire order or reorder some selected products.

Warn customers about any changes in product availability. If a model has been discontinued, offer alternative products. Nothing is worse than coming to check out just to be informed that a product is out of stock.

Let customers know if a new model of a previously bought product is available and make it easy to replace it.

If the price has changed since the last purchase, make it known as early as possible. Update customers on current promotions, which could be different from the last time the order was placed.

Moreover, make sure configurable products retain product configuration details for make-to-order, so the customer does not need to go through the configuration process again.

One of the key benefits of B2B ecommerce is customer self-service capabilities. Implement the recommendations above to save your customers the most precious resource — their time.

Order Status Updates

Real-time visibility into order status and updates empower customers to track and manage their transactions proactively. By offering order tracking and notification features, businesses enhance transparency and build customer trust throughout the order lifecycle.

Not all order status changes happen in the ecommerce system, but to improve customer experiences, businesses must ensure that ALL notifications are received through the self-service channel. If an order is modified after it has been placed, these changes need to be synced back to the ecommerce system to provide customers with a single source of truth.

Integrating maintenance Requests and Support with an Online Portal

And to help customers after the purchase, create and support a knowledge database, FAQs, and usage and repair instructions.

By offering the ability to place a maintenance request on self-service support portals and ticketing systems, businesses empower customers to report and resolve issues autonomously, reducing reliance on manual intervention.

Conclusion

At the heart of every successful B2B transaction lies a seamless customer experience. It’s not merely about satisfying immediate needs but about fostering long-term relationships built on trust, reliability, and value delivery.

CX is the linchpin of sustainable growth and differentiation in today’s interconnected digital economy.

About the Author:

Michael Vax is the founder of CommerceIsDigital, which provides consulting services and training programs for companies deploying B2B and BTC ecommerce strategies. He is a former executive at ecommerce technology companies Spryker Systems, SAP Commerce Cloud, Elastic Path and WebInterpret.

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In June, “layoffs at big tech companies continued to hurt overall IT hiring,” Janco says, adding, “Large high-tech firms continue to lay off to have better bottom lines. Included in that group of companies that have recently announced new layoffs are Microsoft and Google.”

The 5.9% June IT unemployment rate is up from under 4.0% in March, when it was slightly less than the overall unemployment rate, Janco’s data reports show.

But there’s better news on the B2B ecommerce front, especially for IT professionals with AI skills, Janco says.

Although Janco didn’t break out ecommerce job numbers, it has learned that many employers are striving to cut costs by operating more efficiently — and are looking for IT workers who can help develop AI-powered applications and B2B ecommerce connections to boost revenue and profits.

“From our interviews, data, and analysis, we see that many organizations are looking to improve their bottom lines,” Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco, said in an email reply to Digital Commerce 360.

He added that companies realize that IT has some of the highest costs per FTE (full-time equivalents), including contractors and consultants.

“The mean compensation for IT staff now is $103,692 across all organizations,” Janulaitis said.  “If you add contractors and consultants, that number gets closer to $150,000.”

Relying on AI and ecommerce for automation

“Chief information officers are focused on using AI to automate functions like customer support, exception reporting, and routine management of legacy applications,” Janulaitis said. “As that occurs, the number of FTEs is reduced.”

He added that, to develop AI applications, CIOs must hire or retain consultants or contractors who can quickly develop and deploy AI and machine learning solutions.

“Ecommerce and B2B linkages are areas of particular focus,” he said. “Individuals with those skills and experience are in high demand and quickly find jobs.”

Janulaitis added that, unfortunately, IT pros without AI skills are being left out of areas with stronger employment demand.

“Traditional legacy IT pros are another case, and the high unemployment rates hit them directly.”

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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Jay Schneider, CEO, B2B-Squared

Taking a page from retail ecommerce, he adds, “what we can do is basically connect a new customer to the store” and then build a profitable, long-term relationship with them.

“But in B2B, it’s more complex,” he says. “It’s not about promotions or flash sales … where retailers make their money on upselling and loyalty programs.”

B2B commerce, he asserts, “is more about products that go into assemblies, related products and product lines, and replenishment products.”

Schneider says the more B2B sellers compile workflow data on how they search for, interact with, and purchase through digital content as well as through offline channels, the more sellers can use that data to build personalized marketing automation to boost conversions and sales from existing customers.

The sales engine flywheel effect

It’s the sales engine flywheel effect — the more customers interact with a seller, the more data the seller has to trigger automated, personalized marketing designed to drive conversions and sales, he says.

B2B-Squared has launched Flywheel B2B Marketing Automation, a technology and services package designed to build on customer online activity and product and marketing data for a more productive B2B buying experience.

“As we do this over and over and over again, it creates this flywheel effect — this energy that continues to drive ecommerce,” he says, adding: “If we have a number of these workflows working all at one time, it should be what we really expect commerce to generate in B2B — and  that is the opportunity to sell more to our existing customer.”

Schneider asserts that enterprise marketing platforms are mostly designed for generating sales leads and marketing content, “not building incremental ecommerce income.” He adds that email and marketing platforms are built primarily for consumer marketing and not for the complexities of B2B customers and markets.

He says that Flywheel B2B Marketing Automation takes a different approach, including:

• Marketing automation triggered by such online actions as add-to-list, add-to-cart, or checkout; or responses to email promotions or sales rep communications.
• The use of critical data from a seller’s products and promotions and from customer activity to build personalized and automated campaigns designed to boost conversions.
• Integrated technology to coordinate email delivery, marketing automation and personalization for building and improving customized marketing campaigns.
• A turn-key approach where all services — campaign design, management, reporting, etc. — are included in the monthly subscription.

Justin King, managing partner of consulting and advisory firm B2X Partners and a global senior analyst for the B2B eCommerce Association, has reviewed the Flywheel B2B system and says it is critical for bringing more B2B customers into digital commerce.

“In the B2B world, there’s a ton of chatter about technology like ecommerce platforms and product information management systems (PIMs), but the real challenge is getting customers to actually use these digital tools,” he says. “It’s more about the right processes than just the technology. Simply setting up a B2B store isn’t enough to ensure customers will flock to it.”

King says Flywheel B2B is “the first digital marketing platform designed specifically to shift customer transactions from offline to online. By creating workflows that link customers directly to your online store, it not only helps kickstart their use of the ecommerce site but also keeps them coming back, which in turn means they will spend more.”

B2B-Squared is offering Flywheel B2B as a monthly tiered subscription, starting at $1,995, with services and software included.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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Michael Vax

Many B2B companies sell complex products and must invest in educational content and better product discovery tools to make it easier for customers to select the right products while avoiding costly mistakes. 

Here are the essential steps to help you achieve a great customer experience in B2B Ecommerce during the product discovery phase. 

Providing comprehensive product content to educate your customers 

With many options available and complex products sold online, customers need help to decide which product is right for them. Buyers want to research and understand their options when buying new equipment or selecting a spare part. 

Enriching product listings with comprehensive content is instrumental in educating customers about product features, benefits, and use cases. By providing detailed product descriptions, specifications, how-to guides, and multimedia assets, businesses empower customers to make informed purchase decisions. 

Invest in white papers, analyst reports, case studies, product demos, and data sheets to provide additional support with product selection. 

If a business sells internationally, it is important to consider localizing product content. Remember that localization goes beyond mere translation as it needs to account for different measurement units, date formats, currencies, and terminology used in different regions. 

In most businesses, product data managed in internal systems like ERP are insufficient for selling online. It needs to be enriched with additional attributes and images to help customer compare them and select the best fit for their needs. 

Investing in powerful search, filtering, and navigation tools 

Search is the most frequently used feature in any online store, and implementing a search-as-you-type feature and using autocomplete to show suggested search queries can greatly enhance the customer experience. Ecommerce site search engines should be capable of recognizing product names, categories, and product attributes in multiple languages, knowing synonyms, ignoring cases, and understanding syntax. 

To ensure customers aren’t overwhelmed with a long list of results, search results should show categories containing the search terms, suggested products, and product-related content like blog posts or landing pages. 

For ecommerce stores with extensive catalogs, filters, also known as facets, are essential tools to help visitors narrow search results on category pages. 

A particularly useful feature of facets is their ability to show how many products satisfy filter conditions, enabling customers to quickly and easily find what they want. To benefit from facet filtering, product data should first be enriched to have a consistent set of attributes. 

Coherent and intuitive site navigation is key to guiding customers through the purchasing journey. By logically organizing product categories and subcategories, businesses ensure customers can locate relevant products with minimal effort. Consider implementing multiple ways to navigate your site: by how products are used, by solutions they are part of, or by level of customer expertise. 

While the best search and navigation practices described above enhance user experience in B2C and B2B online stores, there are also some additional B2B-specific usability requirements. 

B2B buyers are professionals and, in most cases, have detailed knowledge of products they want to purchase when buying from established vendors. To achieve greater efficiency in product selection, they would like to do searches by using SKU numbers instead of product names, as well as use product identifiers that are defined in their procurement system. In other words, they want to search by their internal product ID vs. IDs used by the merchant. While it may be too expensive to implement for every client, merchants should consider adding this capability to improve the CX of their most important customers. 

Strategic merchandising of related products and bundles also plays a vital role in B2B CX. For example, B2B Merchants should create merchandising links between discontinued products and their alternatives. 

Enable Digital Service-oriented Experience 

Complex B2B purchases require a high-touch approach and an experienced sales team. While having well-prepared product content is essential to answering most customer questions, some buyers may still require the expertise of a business representative to make a final purchasing recommendation. 

Therefore, combining the unique advantages of personal and digital selling is important. 

Thankfully, many ecommerce vendors have implemented tools that allow sales representatives to access the ecommerce storefront on behalf of customers. With this feature, sales agents can log in to the store and assist customers in making their purchase decisions. 

Integrating live assistance features into the online store enables customers to receive personalized support and guidance in real time. By offering live chat, co-browsing, and video conferencing capabilities, businesses bridge the gap between digital interactions and human engagement, fostering better customer experience. 

Transparent Availability 

Most B2B purchases are time-critical. Real-time visibility into product availability greatly enhances customer experience by enabling customers to make informed purchase decisions and preventing potential stockouts or delays. By integrating inventory management systems with the ecommerce platform, businesses ensure customers can access up-to-date information and eliminate countless back-and-force emails and phone calls. 

Enabling Mobile experience 

Optimizing the ecommerce experience for mobile devices is essential for catering to the evolving preferences of modern professionals. By implementing responsive design principles and mobile-friendly interfaces, businesses ensure that customers can access and interact with the platform seamlessly across devices. 

About the Author:

Michael Vax is a founder of CommerceIsDigital, which provides consulting services and training programs for companies deploying B2B and BTC ecommerce strategies. He is a former executive at ecommerce technology companies Spryker Systems, SAP Commerce Cloud, Elastic Path and WebInterpret.

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Steve Pruden

B2B business leaders treat their industry as a wholly different and more complex ecosystem than what takes place in the B2C realm. And, in fairness, it would be unfair to compare B2B and B2C as apples to apples. B2B sees longer sales cycles and larger buying quantities and payments and works with more sophisticated products.

But focusing on their differences overlooks the people behind the businesses doing deals. These B2B leaders purchasing parts for machinery equipment or service licenses are B2C consumers in every other aspect of their life. They still purchase home goods, presents, and experiences like everyone else, which is why it’s natural that those B2C goliaths (Amazon, Nike, Target, and Netflix, to name a few) have such an influential hold. For every manufacturing purchase a B2B director makes for their business, they make dozens of B2C purchases to fit their needs.

B2C has become a stage gate for B2B companies. The features and experiences that resonate most and provide the most value in the B2C world become the latest expectations for B2B. Why should B2B leaders have to deal with a sales rep face-to-face when they can go online and place an order themselves in every other life situation? The answer is they shouldn’t.

The current driving force for B2B commerce includes digital-first conversions, product recommendations, and delivery transparency. But there are also a handful of mainstream capabilities and features in the B2C world that will soon become the expectation in B2B.

Highly Configurable Products

I’ve mentioned already that for many B2B organizations, the challenge of ecommerce is that the products being purchased can be much more complex and specific. The difficulties caused by these complexities must be solved through technology, as has been the case in the B2C world, and that’s where we’re headed.

If you need a new sink and faucet for your home, you can go to the Home Depot or Lowe’s ecommerce site and customize the size, color, and material to fit your needs, and then view how it would look on the screen. That type of visualization will soon be in demand in B2B. Say you’re building a new airport, and instead of one sink, you need 100 with specific specs, styles, and so on. That’s much more complicated than buying one, but the experience will soon be the same, or closer to it.

Another example of this is in the tech world. For a company moving to a new office and needing a computing infrastructure (gateways, routers, monitors, servers), the processes should be similar to ordering equipment for a home office on Amazon.

Online Subscription Purchases

For the professional services industry — which makes up a sizeable portion of B2B — non-physical licenses and service agreements replace pallets of products. Leaders will soon expect to be able to purchase technology licenses (think Salesforce, Adobe, etc.) and repeatable monthly service contracts the same way they subscribe to YouTube TV.

There is no excuse for the complicated paper order forms that have been the norm in this area to remain in place moving forward. Simplifying and automating the experience is long overdue, especially considering the number of platforms and software making up the modern B2B company’s tech stack.

Frictionless Repurchases

Too much effort on the part of B2B sales teams is spent simply taking the same order from the same customer without any change to the order taking place. A company buys Xamount of products and when it gets low, it orders the same amount again. Rinse and repeat.

B2B can, and should, take a page from B2C electronics in terms of automated and seamless reorders. Household gadget brands — like printers, for example — are syncing with Amazon and other big-box retailers to make life easier. When your ink or toner gets low, the printer tells Amazon it’s time for more, and Amazon places the order and delivers it to your door.

Take away the hassle and make it easier for your buyers to set up automatic reorders over a certain period of time. It doesn’t have to involve sophisticated technology like with a printer and Amazon. Use your customer data to identify trends and predict when a customer will need more from you, and then allow it to happen seamlessly.

Customer Loyalty

High on the list of upcoming demands will be how B2B organizations incentivize customers to use their products and services. Competition in the market only grows with every passing year, and a gift from the sales rep over the holidays won’t cut it any longer. Unless B2B companies place an emphasis on the post-purchase and retention stages, buyers will leave for someone else.

This post-purchase strategy doesn’t necessarily mean a punch card where the 10th order is free. But your loyalty efforts should make the buyer’s life easier by coming back. Provide a discount for automatic reorders. Offer tiers with rewards based on purchase history and quantity. B2C brands focus intently on making customers feel wanted and appreciated. That feeling doesn’t just go away in business dealings, so B2B organizations have to step up to meet it.

One of the best learnings that B2C can teach B2B is that expectations are constantly changing, and standing still is the same as moving backward. You don’t need a crystal ball to succeed. But you should take a moment and think through how you engage with brands in your daily lives and what emotions and needs translate to your business life. Because chances are Target and Starbucks will put in place strategies that your customers will demand soon enough.

About the author

Steve Pruden is the CEO of Studio Science, a customer experience consultancy. Steve joined Studio Science from cloud technology consulting firm Appirio, where he helped lead the business through a $500 million acquisition by Wipro, a  global IT services company.

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Michael Vax

B2B ecommerce user interfaces are often known as pain points rather than examples of great customer experiences (CX). Unlike their consumer-focused counterparts, many platforms feature legacy interfaces that are cumbersome, outdated and downright painful to navigate.

It used to work well before as these interfaces were only used internally by employees trained to use them for their jobs. For example, I worked for a large company with a terrible and time-consuming expense report system. However, as an employee, I had no choice but to learn and use it as this was the only way to get reimbursed after a business trip.

Things change when a B2B company implements ecommerce, as it opens some of these internal operations to its customers, who have a choice and may decide to take their business elsewhere when faced with complex workflows, unintuitive designs and disjointed user experiences.

The usability challenge is compounded by a crucial demographic shift as a significant portion of B2B buyers are now millennials, a generation of digital natives accustomed to seamless digital experiences in their personal lives. For them, interacting with archaic, mainframe-style interfaces optimized for machines rather than humans is not just inconvenient — it’s disheartening.

In a business landscape where customer loyalty is increasingly tenuous, businesses cannot overlook the emotional dimension of customer experience.

What is customer experience?

First, a quick definition of customer experience (CX).

Customer experience, or CX, is a customer’s overall perception of your business after interacting with your business across the buyer’s journey. It is not limited to what a customer thinks about your product, your website design, or how they interact with your sales and support teams — it’s all of it. It’s how they feel about their entire experience with your brand, offline and online.

Each B2B customer persona has a set of purchasing needs

Effective CX process begins with a nuanced understanding of B2B ecommerce buyer personas. From procurement specialists to managers with budget responsibilities, each persona brings unique preferences, pain points, and purchasing dynamics.

Do you provide a good customer onboarding experience, or is the door to your online B2B store half-closed?

The answer to this question determines not only the level of adoption of your digital channel but also its business performance.

As consumers, we are used to and expect openness when shopping online. We can enter any online store and expect to see product information and prices and be able to go through checkout.

That is not always the case for B2B buyers. Too many B2B shops hide behind a Great Chinese Wall as if the main goal is keeping customers out instead of luring them in.

Improving the B2B ecommerce CX

Users are required to log in before even being able to see products, or they can see products but not prices, or they can see both products and prices but cannot buy.

Yes, there are (or at least were) good reasons for asking customers to sign a contract and pass a credit check before starting to do business with them.

But do these reasons sound outdated now with the adoption of online commerce?

Do we now have better tools to welcome our new prospects and customers and fully open the door to a B2B online shop that the company has spent so much money and time developing? And can we do it without increasing business risk?

B2B ecommerce merchants can and should greatly improve customer experience (CX) by welcoming new customers with the information they need to get to know the brand and its products and be able to buy during the first visit.

Working with first-time buyers

To achieve this, merchants may need to put some limitations in place for first-time buyers.

For example:

• Limit the assortment of products available to new customers and do not allow them to buy customized or expensive products.
• They can limit available payment methods and don’t allow buying on credit.

The second option is to require your customers to self-register before buying, and implement some checks to minimize fraud: require a business email address, automatically check the business registration number, and implement API integration with credit bureaus.

After a successful first order, a B2B merchant can perform additional checks on the new customer to enable the full functionality.

Traditionally, most B2B businesses don’t display prices online, while some only show prices to logged-in customers. Companies rationalize the reasons as follows:

• We don’t want our competitors to know.
• Prices vary by customer.
• Prices fluctuate constantly.
• Personalized products/services have special prices, etc.

These are legitimate reasons in almost all cases. However, not displaying prices goes against customers’ needs and thus creates a negative shopping experience.

Revealing the price on your ecommerce website is a way to gain visitors’ trust. They consider companies that present this essential information to be authentic and direct.

Building trust with buyers

Transactions are more likely to occur when people feel informed about your offers and trust your organization. Displaying prices can be an excellent practice to increase conversion rates.

There are multiple ways to find a middle ground.

• Even if you can’t show the exact prices, display price examples, a range or a “starting from.” Many B2B products and services are complex. The price structure varies for each customer depending on countless situations. Still, this is no excuse not to post price information. Estimates can often appease prospects during the search phase.
• Display default prices and encourage customers to register to receive discounts.
• Only show prices for basic, commonly available products and ask customers to register or contact sales for complex and unique products.

About the Author

Michael Vax is a founder of CommerceIsDigital, which provides consulting services and training programs for companies deploying B2B and BTC ecommerce strategies. He is a former executive at ecommerce technology companies Spryker Systems, SAP Commerce Cloud, Elastic Path and WebInterpret.

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Paul do Forno

The impending surge of 16,000 SAP S/4 upgrades spotlights the back office as a pivotal and well-understood element foundational to business operations. Yet, within this widespread acknowledgment, a strategic opportunity surfaces: the front office, though often overshadowed, emerges as the key to unlocking new revenue and seizing untapped opportunities.

While the back office provides core capabilities, the front office presents a new pathway for businesses to venture into innovative realms or channels, driving growth and capitalizing on newfound potential.

Navigating the SAP S/4 wave

The heartbeat of this transformation lies in the need to upgrade back-office systems, specifically SAP S/4HANA. These SAP updates are triggering a surge in upgrades, aligning with the broader trend of technological advancements. The focus is not solely on customer-facing roles but encompasses the entire operational spectrum. Many companies find themselves at a crucial juncture — a crossroads that demands a holistic approach to updating both the back and front office.

The role of the back office in supporting and facilitating seamless operations and financials is paramount. Upgrading and maintaining these systems is not just about internal efficiency; it is a critical move to ensure customer satisfaction and drive overall business success. The synergy between the back and front office becomes evident as companies explore streamlining their back-office processes. Synchronizing the upgrade of the front office can help to pay for the back-office updates, ensuring a cohesive ERP system.

The front office, encompassing marketing, sales, service, and commerce, is the face of the company. Recent technological strides enable the synchronization of front- and back-office functions. This synchronization eradicates manual data entry, minimizing errors, and ensuring real-time access to customer data for the front office. Such streamlined operations facilitate personalized service and swift responses to market changes.

B2B commerce stands as a linchpin in the front office, seamlessly connecting with the back office. Think of B2B commerce as the digitization of B2B sales. The omnichannel view of B2B commerce, spanning direct commerce, B2B marketplaces, procurement commerce, and sales-assisted channels, is critical. This importance is further emphasized by a Forrester Research study projecting a 50% increase, reaching $3 trillion in B2B ecommerce over the next four years.

B2B Commerce: The Catalyst for Front-Office Growth

Today, customers prioritize companies who offer digital tools — officially putting the paper catalogs on the back burner. And if companies want to remain competitive and grow, they will need to have robust self-service options that users can not only opt into, but a system that allows for a smooth and seamless experience. And a robust, well-oiled front office has the potential to unlock more revenue, covering the investment made in upgrading both back- and front-office systems.

When companies firm up their front office by tapping into the array of digital tools that help them sell across channels — Omni-Channel B2B Commerce — the potential is limitless. They can provide an end-to-end digital sales experience that empowers them to more efficiently and effectively serve their customers through:

• Direct commerce / Customer Portal / Dealer Portals – a website that supports marketing and catalog management online. This also includes mobile responsive design.
• B2B marketplaces – a company’s own and third-party marketplaces in which companies can sell both their own products and facilitate others to sell via online marketplaces.
• Procurement commerce – a platform that facilitates buyers to access a supplier’s storefront from within the buyer’s own procurement application.
• Sales Assisted – allows direct connection with customers through call centers and online chats to complete orders or resolve any issues in a timely manner.

As B2B commerce is expected to grow over the next four years, digital transformation should be seen as a growth channel for any B2B company.

Success has been proven through a manufacturer’s recent digital transformation. While the investment was 24% for the front office, it resulted in 57% of the overall business value case in both the front and back office.

By investing in their front office, companies can help pay for their back-office upgrades — continuing to fuel strong revenue growth, building strong relationships with their customers as well as creating new efficiencies across their business, ultimately leading to easier sales processes and increased return of investment (ROI).

About the author:

Paul do Forno is the managing director of Deloitte Digital’s Commerce Practice.

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Christina Schmitt, principal analyst, Forrester Research

But companies risk losing out on the opportunity to increase customer value and sales through an interconnected partner ecosystem, including brand influencers, services firms and software partners, as well as traditional transactional partners like distributors and resellers, Forrester says in the report, “B2B CMOs Must Elevate Partner Ecosystem Marketing,” authored principal analyst Christina Schmitt and other Forrester analysts.

Broad partner ecosystems can help a B2B company address more of what customers need, providing a higher level of personalization many B2B buyers demand. But an effective partner ecosystem strategy requires a coordinated marketing strategy, Forrester says.

“If partners are not part of the organization’s brand messaging and go-to-market strategy process, it can lead to partners rolling out their own view of the provider’s brand and joint solution messaging,” Forrester says. “Not only does this result in messaging inconsistency, but it is also a missed opportunity to craft synergistic positioning that more effectively describes the value that the provider and the partner bring to buyers together.”

Forrester adds that a B2B company should also direct “a consistent lead and opportunity management process across all partners.”

In addition, Forrester asserts that CMOs must “ensure partner ecosystem marketing is fully integrated into all marketing areas — from strategy to planning, brand and communications, campaigns, value measurement, as well as the organization and operating model.”

Forrester notes that, for a typical B2B company, “45% of B2B marketing decision-makers say the primary source of the organization’s revenue comes from new or renewed business from ecosystem partners.”

The report lays out the key elements of a company’s partner ecosystem marketing transformation, including:

• crafting a marketing strategy that aligns with their partners’ growth strategies.
• developing a consistent communication strategy that strengthens each company’s brands.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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Laura Ramos, vice president and principal analyst, Forrester Research

That’s the advice from Forrester Research in the report, “Predictions 2024: B2B Marketing, Sales, and Product,” by vice president and principal analyst Laura Ramos and other Forrester analysts.

Forrester advises that B2B marketing, sales and product teams “face a turbulent year ahead, full of partner-centered growth and productivity ups as well as demand, technology and regulatory/legal downs.”

It asserts that generative AI may broadly impact all teams across marketing, sales and product, “with a mix of both success and failures” throughout 2024.

But Forrester adds: “Teams that double down on customer analysis and understanding, address buyer preferences, and enrich collaboration with [channel] partners will find the ride exhilarating.”

GenAI tops the B2B challenges

Topping off the challenges ahead is generative AI, which Forrester predicts will sift through customer data for insights that will direct one in five new product launches. But while GenAI will help make 2024 a bumper year for new products, Forrester warns that “thinly customized GenAI content will degrade purchase experience for 70%” of B2B buyers by failing “to demonstrate an understanding of their organization’s business conditions or needs.”

To deepen understanding of B2B buyers, Forrester says “B2B marketers should invest in fresh buyer and customer persona interviews and use the transcripts to guide AI-generated content personalization efforts,” adding: “We anticipate that one-third or fewer will do so, but those who do will see their investment in AI-generated content pay off.

Among its other 2024 predictions, Forrester says half of B2B companies will boost partner ecosystem technology investment. It suggests those companies consider collaboration in such areas as GenAI, co-marketing and partner-led marketplaces.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, vice president of B2B and Market Research Development, at mark@digitalcommerce360.com and follow him on Twitter @markbrohan.

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