Arno Ham

The introduction of e-commerce has changed the way we shop forever. Over the past 30 years we’ve been given the freedom to buy what we like, when we like, wherever we like, and the journey of online shopping is far from complete, as it continues to rival the conventional ways of buying and selling.

What once began as a consumer buying behaviour has now made firm in-roads into the B2B marketplace. By 2019, manufacturers and wholesalers will account for a combined 30% of spending on e-commerce technology, and that these B2B companies will spend more on ecommerce than B2C retailers, according to Forrester Research Inc.

E-commerce 1.0

Traditionally B2B organizations used sales reps and physical stores to sell products and services to market. While businesses recognized the importance of building strong customer relationships, often the sales process was long winded and complicated. Sales reps knew the customer better than an online platform and the idea of uploading products and understanding how or if a web store could apply complex pricing agreements felt overwhelming.

However, according to our Digital Transformation research of 300 B2B companies, which we conducted in the fourth quarter of 2017, 75% of them have had customers demand to buy online. In a bid to remain competitive and retain a loyal customer base, businesses took the first steps in creating an online web store. By investing in a basic first-generation e-commerce solution, businesses met the needs of customers who wanted to place an order using a simplistic web store.

E-commerce 2.0

But almost as soon as businesses had set up their online stores, they realized that customers wanted more than simply being able to place an online order: they wanted to view order history and invoices while receiving product recommendations and predictions. It was clear that first generation e-commerce solutions lacked the features required to deliver a strong and competitive customer experience.

Businesses wanted to provide customers with more sophisticated features and functions, such as filters and categories. By giving customers more information and free rein when using the web store, businesses were able to create and retain a loyal customer base by providing them with everything they wanted and more. Our research found that 76% of B2B organizations plan on upgrading their simple web store to a next generation solution that is able to utilize existing data and provide the features demanded by customers.

E-commerce 3.0

With 72% of businesses aiming to sell solely online in the future and as customers quickly outgrow basic web store functionalities, more and more organizations are recognizing the importance of putting their web stores at the heart of future business growth plans. Businesses are now looking at third-generation platforms that are able to increase order conversion and revenue using e-commerce. They want a solution that can be fully integrated within their existing infrastructure, and third-generation solutions bring both the internal and external facing systems together to deliver greater personalization and customer experiences.

For example, a distributor may have hundreds of thousands of SKUs it actively manages in its ERP system. Instead of simply choosing a shopping cart application with a siloed database that would require them to pull data from the ERP and push it into their e-commerce platform, e-commerce 3.0 will work with the other systems they are already using so they can build everything in one place. This will provide them with a more complete view of customer history so that they can better target email content, or make suggestions when on the phone with a client.

Customer demand will continue to evolve, causing customer experience to overtake price and products as the key brand differentiator in the coming years. To keep customers happy, businesses are continuing to invest in e-commerce solutions and other IT advances that are able to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of the digital world. As e-commerce 4.0 sits on the horizon, so does predictive purchasing, the technology will start to think for you cutting out any human contact. The use of virtual reality, augmented reality and voice-enabled purchasing—and more—will soon be a reality. Businesses are going to have to keep up.

E-commerce 4.0

Customer demands will continue to evolve with time. Merchants will respond by using artificial intelligence, or AI, so they know what the customer wants before the customer does. They’ll also respond by immediately fulfilling orders.

For the distributors who have successfully implemented e-commerce 3.0, and have all their systems working together, order processing will become automated. They will be able to leverage robots that can work around the clock picking and packing orders.

For manufacturers with configurable products, they might use technology that gives customers a virtual reality view of what the end-product would look like, and let them add and remove features based on the experience. Adapting technologies like these will help B2B organizations stay ahead of their competition.

Arno Ham is chief product officer at Sana Commerce, a provider of e-commerce software, where he has led B2B e-commerce technology projects for such companies as Heineken, AkzoNobel and PostNL. Follow him on Twitter @arnoham and on LinkedIn.