Custom Ordering B2B eCommerce Solution

Offering Custom Product Options With Your B2B eCommerce Solution

Custom Ordering B2B eCommerce Solution

All companies wish that they could give their customers exactly what they want while making a profit. Advances in software and manufacturing processes make custom orders increasingly easier for B2B eCommerce companies. An integrated platform can allow a high degree of product customization. B2B buyers have more choices than ever, and they can easily switch suppliers if a company won’t accommodate their custom requests. Providing customers with custom products and special price quotes keeps them happy and builds loyalty, and custom eCommerce solutions are a great first step.

Satisfying High-Volume Distributors

High-volume distributors want territorial exclusivity, but that’s not always possible to offer. Customized eCommerce solutions are tailored in special ways to give distributors a competitive edge. For example, companies could sell personalized sports jerseys instead of generic versions. Another form of customization is pricing. B2B companies can offer their buyers and distributors lower prices so that they can sell their products at a discount. Keeping distributors satisfied requires offering the right prices and solving territorial disputes with buying incentives.

Unfortunately, B2B companies can seldom dictate how and where their distributors resell their products. A custom eCommerceplatform, specially designed for B2B, like Clarity eCommerce, can provide you with customizable pricing options to provide multiple tiers, price, and quantity breaks for not only B2B but any of your purchasing entities.

Push and Pull Strategies

Integration enables a full range of custom orders for dealers, merchants, and distributors. Integrations can be to your back-office line of business applications, such as your ERP, CRM, EHR / EMR, PIM, 3PL, or your supply chain of vendors. Clarity Connect is an integration platform, that can provide real-time integration with any and all of your applications, providing the improved and automated experience you need to increase sales, conversions, and process efficiencies.

The benefits of platform integration include these advantages: [1]

Design Products Based on BI Forecasts

• Integrating business intelligence allows B2B companies to forecast sales trends and build products to fulfill the demand. Automated low-stock notifications can help to produce purchase orders for just-in-time production.

Use Hybrid Sales Strategies

• Companies can build high-volume products to order while supplying customized products for low-volume sales.

Offer Multiple Product Options

• Products can be custom-manufactured to standardized options or kept in stock in different configurations. Clarity eCommerce provides a multi-location inventory option (i.e. fulfilling from the closest location, managing different prices for stock locations, etc.).

Assemble Products to Order

• Big-ticket items can be assembled to order. These might include computers, custom cars, and other expensive items. Clarity provides the ability to “tag” certain parts as part of a kit or bundle, protecting it from being purchased and leaving a product without a component.

Link Customer Requirements to Production

• Flexible processes ensure that customer requirements or amendments go directly to the production department. If changes are necessary, automated decision-making can speed up the process.

Integrating the Supply Chain

• Producing customized orders or custom quantities of products in a reasonable amount of time requires efficient communication with suppliers. Integrating elements of the supply chain can automate the ordering of materials and components for customized orders, as well as provide the ability to drop-ship directly from the vendors to your customers.

Custom Ordering Portals

• Integration streamlines special orders by providing ordering portals for buyers and distributors. Customers can choose product options, enjoy unique navigation schemes and find multiple price lists based on order size and other factors.

Product Configurator Software

• Integrated product configurator software allows customers and distributors to build custom products within predefined parameters. The software can generate drawings, 3-D models, custom sizes, and highly personalized details. Product configurators can build products from the ground up for distributors with special needs. Integration speeds up the approval process, the pricing of custom products, and the ordering of raw materials. Customers can get precise estimates of manufacturing and shipping times so that distributors can plan their own marketing campaigns. Clarity eCommerce provides a “hook” to design and build configurators that are specific to your business, products, and purchasing process.

Pricing Flexibility Is Crucial

Delivering custom price quotes and special pricing tiers is one way that B2B companies can satisfy their buyers and distributors. Negotiating prices based on the size of orders is a time-honored approach in B2B sales, and integration can automate approvals, accelerate receiving price quotes and trigger the quoted price automatically when buyers place an order. Flexible payment options are also crucial in eCommerce sales. Responsive companies offer their customers support for purchase orders, credit and debit cards, checks, mobile wallets, bank transfers, and third-party payment options like PayPal. [2]

Providing Support for Marketing

B2B companies often find it necessary to provide marketing support for their products. Support services might include producing compelling content such as catalog descriptions, custom catalogs, images, how-to videos, and media advertising. Integrated B2B eCommerce solutions can update content throughout the company and third-party integrations such as distributor portals.

B2B buyers today complete more than half of their purchases online through self-service applications. [3] Integrating with social media is a great way to promote B2B products and offer expanded product options to satisfy the demanding millennial generation of buyers.

Meeting Distributor Needs

B2B companies can satisfy distributors and a range of buyer types by offering them the ability to order custom products and quantities. Integration is the engine that fuels these capabilities, but it also offers other benefits. Distributors want guidance on many issues such as merchandising, producing high-resolution visuals, and managing content and catalogs. Integrated platforms make collaborations easy.

Offering Custom Product Options

The first step to building a stronger relationship with your buyers and distributors is integrating your sales platform to automate placing customer orders. A strong developer can build a robust API layer that enables flexibility and scalability. A collaborative and supportive developer will also train your staff to get the full benefits of integration and pass them along to your customers through self-service options.

With years of integration experience, Clarity can be that developer for you. We have our own integration platform that expedites and automates your integrations. Give us a call today to discuss your custom ordering portal, integration project, or any other customized eCommerce solutions.

References:

[1] Sloanreview.mit.edu: Successful Build-to-Order Strategies Start With the Customer

[2] Bigcommerce.com: B2B eCommerce Trends (+ Statistics From Our 2018 Survey)

[3] Avatarsyndicate.com: B2B E-Commerce Statistics & Latest Trends 2017