My coverage of B2B e-commerce and the providers of related technology has landed me in a mix of places—and I’m referring more to the scope of digital commerce trends than the geographical locations of vendors and their conferences.

The trends all add up to up to a kind of OmniB2B, or a shorthand version of the popular and overused term of “omnichannel” retailing. The latter, of course, is the concept of retailers enabling their customers to browse and buy not only in bricks-and-mortar stores but also through any Internet-connected device, whether that’s a computer, smartphone, tablet or a touchscreen on a shop window or subway station wall. This also involves letting customers start a purchase in one channel and finish it another, with consistent records of their activity across each channel.

Many if not most retailers get the importance of providing such shopping options, and many are at various stages of making it all happen.

Omnichannel is also crucial to the business-to-business world, but it takes on a whole new scope of operations. The omni in B2B involves:

● Online quote-to-cash systems—such as from Apttus, which also offers integrated self-service e-commerce software, and Salesforce.com’s SteelBrick—that lets buyers engage request product information, configure complex products and view the resulting price, and share and negotiate more customized price quotes before completing an order;

● E-commerce sites built on customer relationship management technology platforms—such as via CloudCraze on Salesforce.com—that help sellers better manage e-commerce sales along with customer account activity;

● Procurement software from companies like SAP Ariba, Coupa Software and Vinimaya; and related punchout software from providers like Punchout2Go as well as procurement software vendors, which let buyers link from a procurement software application to the full-featured e-commerce of a favored supplier;

● Software and hardware for connecting field sales reps to e-commerce systems to help their customers research and place complex orders, from such provides as FirstRain, WalkMe, Qstream and Handshake;

● Software for distributing contract materials, such as from
Adobe Systems and DocuSign, for viewing, sharing and signing contracts online on a mobile and desktop computer.

If there’s one common theme that pops up in discussions and presentations at conferences featuring such technology systems and vendors, it’s that companies selling stuff online to other businesses realize they must engage digital methods of interacting with their customers—any way their customers want. It’s about engaging in e-commerce any way and anywhere, and figuring out which methods are most important in the near term and long term to give customers what they want.

Sign up for a free subscription to B2BecNews, a twice-weekly newsletter that covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B e-commerce industry. B2BecNews is published by Vertical Web— Media LLC, which also publishes the monthly business magazine Internet Retailer. Follow Paul Demery, editor for B2B e-commerce, on Twitter @pdemery.

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