Organisations are reaping significant benefits from their digital B2B
commerce strategies, but the fast-paced success has come at a price.
This is the key finding from the Intershop 2015 E-Commerce Report,
launched today, which explores the major shift currently taking place in
B2B commerce.
The survey of 400 European e-commerce decision makers, conducted by independent research company Vanson Bourne, revealed that 97per
cent of organizations have felt an impact due to changes in their B2B
channels. Online-driven, omni-channel transformation is changing the way
B2B brands connect with, engage and retain customers. On the other
hand, digitalisation demands the ongoing integration of supply chain and
demand chain, leading to more cross-linked processes, companies and
businesses.
Overall, respondents expect their
organisation’s digital platforms to grow by 13 per cent in the next two
years – a trend that is driving a parallel evolution of the e-commerce
ecosystem from today’s web shop to a more complex and comprehensive
customer engagement platform. Almost all (98 per cent) respondents
expect that their sector will benefit from the digitalisation of
business, and the same proportion (98 per cent) see opportunities from
the digitalisation of business.
Yet, many are daunted by
challenges as they build out the next phase of their B2B e-commerce
business – especially when it comes to enabling an interconnected
digital enterprise infrastructure. Most respondents (91 per cent) expect
to encounter challenges when growing their digital platform. The
integration of IT systems into the B2B commerce landscape is viewed as a
primary goal for the next three years. The vast majority of
organisations (94 per cent) still needs to integrate at least one IT
system into their B2B commerce landscape, while they are also looking to
incorporate an increasing number of business processes within their B2B
e-commerce platform.
The research also showed that B2B
e-commerce teams are under intense scrutiny, with 99 per cent of those
surveyed saying that their organization measures B2B commerce success –
by measuring customer satisfaction (65 per cent), revenue growth (64 per
cent), average order value (48 per cent) and spend-per-customer (47 per
cent).
“While B2B e-commerce offers huge growth
opportunities, it is very much a race of the fittest,” commented Dr.
Jochen Wiechen, CEO, Intershop. “For many organisations, delivering
highly relevant and contextual experiences to their B2B buyers requires a
radical rethink of their business structures, and a new dimension of
automating processes along supply and demand chain. Those organisations
able to re-engineer their offering fast and effectively will
successfully deliver against today’s buyer expectations. Those that lag
behind, however, risk losing out.”
Further key findings include:
- Technical
faults (47 per cent), low initial digital B2B sales (44 per cent) and
issues integrating digital and offline channels (44 per cent) were the
challenges most likely to be expected when setting up digital B2B
channels. - Almost all (98 per cent) of
respondents saw a greater need to collaborate internally and are
working towards enabling a more integrated overall process. In
particular, there is a focus on greater internal collaboration with
sales executives (55 per cent), eCommerce (52 per cent) and key account
management (48 per cent). - Around
four-in-ten respondents (39 per cent are looking to rethink the
engagement process around customer-centricity – using pricing, data
management and integration to drive personalization and customization to
the next level. - A further 38 per
cent are looking to go beyond B2C best practices to deliver faster and
improved customer services, introduce new business models that generate
new revenue services, and enable faster and improved product development
cycles. - Cloud based services (62 per
cent), e-commerce platforms (48 per cent) and mobile applications (47
per cent) were top investment priorities.
“It is great to
see how many of the organisations we surveyed have embraced digital
enablement. This capability is not only driving sales, but also helping
them to enhance the good old fashioned face-to-face conversations that
take place between key account managers and buyers and influencers,”
said Dr. Jochen Wiechen. “On the other hand, digitalisation is clearly
rewriting the rules of competition. This means organisations are facing
ever greater pressure to integrate their e-commerce operations directly
into the business infrastructure. If they want to compete successfully,
they will need to achieve true digital transformation.”
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