B2B eCommerce Digital Journey: The ‘Run Phase’ or Scaling Through Automation and Software

In the first two parts of this digital commerce journey series from Kingston at the Digital Mavens, we covered getting started in B2B eCommerce and going from Crawl to Walk by getting transactional. In this third installment, Kingston will detail the Run phase for B2B eCommerce.

While making the initial investment in your company’s digital commerce is a critical first step, and getting transactional a necessary second step, the third step in truly achieving top-line organizational revenue growth from your eCommerce is to automate. By automating the right actions and processes, you can increase revenue at an exponential pace.

However, to get to the Run stage there are several areas that you need to focus on. Here are some of the key ones:

• Application Ecosystem – having the right apps to help you do the right things across your ecosystem. Having them connected and working together, and being able to use all of them well.
• Customer Experience – having a solid understanding of your different target customers and the various paths they take to purchase from you. This is then supported by your content which will help them through the different parts of their journey to convert to the next stage.
• Resourcing – having the right resources across your business doing the right things at the right time and in the right way.
• Integrated Data – having your many different data sets integrated so you possess a single view of your customer and their behaviors, in real-time.
• Decision Making – having the ability to make a timely decision based on your data, and insights to capitalize on performance opportunities or to rectify a performance issue.
• A Working eCommerce Ecosystem – having the proven ability to generate sales through your ecosystem end-to-end.
• Clear Positioning – having a clear understanding about what you offer your customers online, as opposed to the many other competitors out there, and then being able to attract and retain your customers based on this positioning.

If you haven’t achieved these yet, then throwing money at your e-business team to go faster will only make you lose money faster. Yes, you may get a few more sales, but at an inefficient level as you leak money. Additionally, you may see plenty of leads and traffic at the earlier stages only to have few of them convert at the bottom of the funnel.

Monetizing your products: Optimization as a ‘growth lever’

A necessary byproduct of organizational growth is effective pricing strategy. Maximizing your profits requires knowing exactly how and when to change pricing. Before digging deeper into the Run phase, read more on accelerating smart growth via pricing from this Forbes piece by a leading tech startup consultant.

Run with automation

As mentioned, the key attribute for the Run stage is moving toward automated workflows. Through the right software, platforms will help your teams to:

• Work more efficiently / do more with less
• Achieve better results (if set up correctly and monitored)
• Scale faster

For example: once you have identified a reoccurring customer behavior and path-to-purchase, such as the need for certain types of information before actually purchasing, you can set up a series of automated workflows that provide the right information to the customer at the right time to enable conversion more quickly.  

The right platforms will also help a complex business really shine, as the software can help you do all the heavy lifting, and provide a seamless purchasing experience to your customer. Complexity shouldn’t mean that you need a complex software that’s difficult to use. In fact, the right software will be surprisingly easy for business users to operate, isolating all of the complexity to the back-end.

However a common issue that we see, is that many eCommerce ecosystems have been built around the business’ requirements and how they want or need to operate. To really Run fast and to start to Fly, eCommerce ecosystems need to be designed around meeting their customers’ requirements.

‘Run’ is generally the hardest stage to get to as work is constant, but the promise of results is high, investment is high, and the ability to waste money is also high, which is why you need a trusted technology partner along the way.

We want to learn more about your challenges around digital selling. Let’s chat. Book some time with one of our eCommerce subject matter experts.