Author: Lindsay Wickham
According to a B2B market trends article published by Digital Commerce 360, manufacturers are starting their digital journeys with customer self-service portals. “With an ERP-integrated solution, manufacturers can launch a portal for routine post-order care. This empowers existing customers to track orders, invoices and payments on their own—without calling customer service.” In addition to solely being beneficial for manufacturers, B2B organizations that choose a scalable ecommerce solution (i.e. with built-in ERP integration) are better suited to grow their market footprint after transitioning existing business to B2B ecommerce.
Focused Impressions early recognized this market trend and the lack of eCommerce solutions in an under-served SAP small to mid-market ecosystem. Their signature product, FocusPoint, makes it easy for B2B companies to customize the user experience and easily show product details, all while connecting through their existing SAP Business One landscape, offering a seamless end-to-end customer experience.
“Our solution supports more than ecommerce value—it supports the entire lifecycle of the order fulfilment process,” notes Frank Paetzold, Chief Solution Architect and VP Professional Services at FocusPoint. “It is a holistic solution that brings together your SAP Business One ERP system to work in real-time with your ecommerce portal to communicate through data transfers and visibility to both the business and the end customer.”
Companies that commit to supporting B2B ecommerce do so to increase customer experience, cut costs, become more efficient, and grow revenue. “Companies want to be able to have a seamless integration from their SAP environment to the ecommerce experience, with effortless exposure of back-office functions and data with the customer portal,” notes Paetzold. FocusPoint allows extended customer self-service functionality, leading to a reduction in costs and less room for error, as well as internal operational efforts via human interaction.
More and more, the B2B commerce experience is trending more towards a B2C buying experience, meaning personalized touchpoints and a focus on a providing great customer experience. With a tool like FocusPoint, both business and end customers are benefitting by inventory accuracy, visibility into in-stock items and date availability for restocks, as well as real-time order fulfillment details such as tracking numbers and status of shipment. Businesses can customize the buying experience, by choosing whether sign in or guest checkout is available, connecting payment terms by business partners, applying price lists, and much more. Customers have access to track orders, easily reorder based on past order history, and pay invoices online.
According to Paetzold, “time to market is the greatest ROI that we offer.” With FocusPoint, simple transactions are a one-time setup on the backend and support a personalized experience for sales/account representatives and the customers served. Product releases are updated regularly, and customers can access new functionality and create a more robust ecommerce customer experience for their end users as they are built out.
As B2B companies look to a single source of truth for data and to alleviate time-consuming manual order entry, a solution like FocusPoint can improve customer experience and build loyalty through automation, seamless digital transactions, and access to real-time product and account/order data.
Brought to you by the B2B and B2c e-commerce implementation team at FocusPoint: an all-in-one solution for SAP Business One customers.
