CivicSolar Inc. is upgrading its digital business operations to better engage business customers and grow sales offline as well as online, co-founder Michael Goldberg says.

In 2015, the company increased its B2B e-commerce sales about 44.4%, to approximately $6.18 million from $4.28 million the prior year, Goldberg says. The company’s e-commerce site, CivicSolar.com, meanwhile, is playing a more important role in driving offline as well as online sales, he adds.

“Our business is based on real-time, valued pricing that we display online, and technical know-how” that CivicSolar provides through its website, Goldberg says.

Founded in 2009, the San Francisco-based distributor of solar panels, batteries, cables and other supplies began selling online the same year through CivicSolar.com. During its first year of business, approximately 50% of its orders were processed online, Goldberg says. That number has since shrunk to about 10% of orders, as the company has transitioned from supplying solar installation tools primarily to professional installers instead of do-it-yourselfers.

The average size of orders, however, has increased along with the transition to professional customers, who place many of their largest orders offline. Businesses usually purchase lower-ticket items on CivicSolar.com, and order larger, more highly priced goods over the phone through one of the company’s 30 account managers, Goldberg says.

“The percentage of our DIY business has gotten much smaller, and the size of the order has changed,” he says. “When you have a big, $10,000 or more order it’s definitely doable online, but for us they usually happen over the phone.”

But the company’s e-commerce site, along with its online customer relationship management and marketing applications, is still crucial to overall sales, Goldberg says.

“Contractors can access our different tools, like online training, our technical help and articles. We regularly publish content that helps contractors to be better solar installers,” Goldberg says. “They find us online. Then they start talking to our account managers, and our tech support teams, and they usually end up doing the transaction over the phone.”

CivicSolar.com attracts 65,000 monthly unique visitors, Goldberg says. The catalog section on the distributor’s e-commerce site receives the greatest number of visitors, and its technical support area is a strong second.

Professional contractors, installers and other business customers have grown to comprise more than 95% of CivicSolar’s total number of customers. The distributor serves some 4,000 North American customers that range in size from contractors with a couple of installers to large corporations earning $500 million in annual revenue, Goldberg says.

As a way to better serve CivicSolar’s growing customer base, the distributor is deploying this month software from Salesforce.com Inc., including an Internet-based customer relationship management system for managing and keeping up with the needs of existing and prospective customers.

CivicSolar is also deploying Pardot by Salesforce, an online marketing tool that will allow the distributor to more easily understand and market to customers based on their interests, Goldberg says. The software will draw on customer order history and related data maintained in CivicSolar’s Salesforce CRM system. “The Pardot marketing component of Salesforce offers so many ways for us to stay in touch with customers and offer them more customized promotions and content,” Goldberg says. “It allows us to manage that customer relationship, fine-tune our marketing and communications, and segment our customers according to purchasing style and other factors.”

CivicSolar will also install Kenandy Inc.’s Internet-based enterprise resource planning, or ERP software, which the distributor will use to organize its inventory and financial records.

CivicSolar also chose the Salesforce software for its ability to integrate with the Drupal Commerce e-commerce software that runs CivicSolar.com, Goldberg says. The distributor has retained web development firm Mountain Point to oversee the deployment and integration of the CRM and marketing applications.

Goldberg declines to disclose what he says is the “significant” price of deploying Salesforce systems, but says “We do believe that because of this investment we will have a major productivity boost in all departments across the organization.”

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