Sol-Ark, an engineering and manufacturing company that produces solar energy technology products, faced a tough road this year in its search for electronic components.
“With the current semiconductor shortage, it has been extremely challenging to source components for our new designs, which have delayed our projects significantly,” says Luis Suarez, a research-and-development engineer at Parker, Texas-based company.
Luis Suarez, R&D engineer, Sol-Ark
But Sol-Ark, which sells solar technology to businesses and consumers, found a reliable source of semiconductors in Sourcengine.com, an electronic components marketplace operated by Sourceability, a provider of supply chain and procurement technology and services. “Sourcengine has made it possible to find those challenging parts with a very user-friendly ecommerce platform,” Suarez says. “They have been able to find parts for us that currently have a global shortage and extremely long times of 50 to 60 weeks.”
Sourcengine, which provides access to 3,000 suppliers of more than 550 million electronic parts, launched new tools earlier this year—BOM Tool and Quote It Tool—to foster commerce on its marketplace.
Buyers on Sourcengine can use the BOM Tool to purchase all of the items listed in their bill of materials, or BOM, from thousands of traceable suppliers on the marketplace. The BOM Tool integrates with the Quote It Tool, which buyers use to search for additional stock and negotiate pricing.
“The future of B2B purchasing will look like and bring the advantages of the consumer ecommerce experience we all recognize today, but most purchasers will still want vendors to work on their behalf and earn their trust,” says Thomas Ruzika, senior product manager at Sourcengine. “By integrating Quote It and the BOM tool, purchasers are not only able to request a quote for an entire list of up to 4,000 parts, but can turn over negotiations on any of those parts to Sourcengine to secure a special quote from across its network of more than 3,000 vendors, potentially unlocking additional inventory and reduced pricing, which is particularly critical amid ongoing shortages.”
Jens Gamperl, CEO, Sourceability
Sourcengine, which operates on ecommerce technology from Spryker Systems, has shown strong growth this year in revenue, search traffic and number of users, even though only 10% of its sales transactions are completely digitally, says Jens Gamperl, Sourceability’s founder and CEO.
For many sales transactions, customers will find the electronic components they need on Sourcengine, then place a call on their phone to place an order. “Some are not comfortable” checking out online for orders that can cost into the thousands of dollars, he notes.
But with more improvements ahead for connecting buyers and sellers, Gamperl says he expects to see a sharp increase in digital orders over the next few years.
One thing that may help drive more digital transactions, he adds, could be more common use of Sourcengine’s application programming interface, or API, to connect a buyer’s technology system with Sourcengine, which is on the web at Sourcengine.com. Companies can use the API to connect their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system or other software, such as a request-for-quote (RFQ) or configure-price-quote (CPQ) application directly to Sourcengine to place orders.
“By 2025, 50% or more of transactions could be fully digital,” he says.
The BOM and Quote-It tools on Sourcengine.com.
Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week, covering technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact editor Paul Demery at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @pdemery.
Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when new Digital Commerce 360 B2B News content is published.