Joe Cicman, senior analyst, Forrester Research

Buyers want helpful online product content and purchasing features, demands that have many of them preferring manufacturers’ websites, new research from Digital Commerce 360 and Forrester Research Inc. finds.

“Brand manufacturers win buyers with great content,” says Forrester senior analyst Joe Cicman. “Our joint research indicates the top choice for business buying in 2023 is the brand manufacturer’s own site (57%), beating-out Amazon Business at 43%. Why? Both a surprise and a delight: 85% of buyers tell us that the best source for product information is the brand manufacturer’s own site.”

The joint research project also found that 70% of B2B buyers will increase their online purchasing of goods and services in 2023.

Cicman — who will discuss at the EnvisionB2B Conference & Exhibition this month the results of the joint DC360/Forrester suryey and the intersection of online buyer demands and sellers’ ecommerce technology strategies — asserts that sellers must review the functions that address the challenges they face in serving customers, then identify the ecommerce technology platform that covers those w.

McKesson discusses B2B commerce trends

Val DuVernet, senior director of digital strategy and optimization, McKesson

Cicman will speak at EnvisionB2B in a June 21 session to analyze with DC360 the results of the joint research project and discuss digital commerce technology trends with Val DuVernet, senior director of digital strategy and optimization at medical products distributor McKesson.

B2B companies “should examine potential ecommerce solutions to identify which ones cover the specific common functions they most value,” Forrester says in the March 2023 report, “Demystifying the Technical Functions of B2B Commerce Solutions,” written by Cicman with input from other Forrester analysts.

Some of those functions, for example, can include how ecommerce technology manages customer account hierarchies, contract terms and personalized product catalogs for each customer.

Gartner’s Gene Alvarez on technology choices

Gene Alvarez, distinguished vice president and analyst covering digital commerce technology at research and advisory firm Gartner Inc., says B2B companies today have plenty options for deploying ecommerce technology based on their resources and their customers’ demands regarding the online buying experience.

Gene Alvarez, distinguished vice president and analyst, Gartner Inc.

Companies with limited IT resources can opt for software-as-a-service platforms that support customized customer-facing front ends. But businesses with more substantial resources can move up to even more customizable modular and composable MACH platforms with extensive use of microservices, APIs, cloud and headless infrastructure configurations, Alvarez says.

As competition increases in B2B ecommerce, and companies develop new and innovative ways to interact with buyers and make their customers’ jobs easier, it will be crucial for online sellers to operate commerce technology they can modify to keep up with new standards.

“As new innovation comes along, you need to” be able to bring about that new innovation because it will be table stakes within a year,” Alvarez says. “That’s where MACH brings advantages.”

Alvarez will speak on digital technology trends and strategies at EnvisionB2B. He will lead a June 20 panel and workshop on building customer loyalty.

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Scott Dushane, director of IT, Fairmount Tire & Rubber

“One of our biggest differentiations is when we answer the phone, it’s on the first couple of rings, every single time,” says Scott Dushane, director of IT.

But while that helps build personal relationships with customers, it’s not a scalable-enough business strategy to meet Fairmount’s goals. And those goals are ambitious — like providing an Uber Eats level of a transparent order and delivery service.

“Just like you can now go to Uber Eats, order a burrito, then know the driver’s name that’s going to pick up that burrito and then hand it to you in exactly 23 minutes, we want that same experience to happen for wholesale tires,” Dushane says.

“It’s a much less sexy industry, but the genie’s out of the bottle — we need to provide the same level of service and supply chain transparency that Uber is providing.”

Making strides in service and sustainability

Fairmount Tire & Rubber primarily serves the four-state region of Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah. It uses its home-grown self-service ecommerce site integrated with an online delivery management system to improve and expand its business. At the same time, it is drastically cutting out paper documents, increasing its sustainability and operating efficiency, Dushane says.

He says Fairmount is making significant strides in upgrading how it engages B2B customers online, matching buyers with the particular tire SKUs they need from a long list of options — such as the many tire brands, sizes, and applications like tread patterns for different types of weather — and providing transparency in deliveries, including same-day service.

Fairmount uses an online delivery management system that has streamlined and expedited the distributor’s delivery system and lets customers know through a GPS-based mobile app what tires are coming and when.

The delivery management system, from Descartes Systems Group, integrates through Google Cloud with Fairmount’s digital commerce platform and other technology systems and applications, including enterprise resource planning, product information management, customer relationship management and warehouse management.

Dushane says that, until recently, the most common call Fairmount’s agents received was “Where’s my tires?” But with the new system, Fairmount can replace those inbound customer service calls with outbound sales “rainmaker” calls often made by the same agent.

“This is real money,” he says.

No more shuffling paper for invoices

The old system had relied heavily on paper documents about customer orders and available delivery trucks, resulting in a difficult process for planning order fulfillment and delivery.

“For many years, it was a stack of papers on someone’s desk. And you would do the old shuffle and figure out how to route and how to build trucks,” Dushane says.

Fairmount now uses its integrated ERP, order management and delivery management systems to automatically coordinate how orders are delivered with the most efficient use of trucks and routes, he adds.

“It is an unbelievably difficult problem to route trucks throughout a city, like mathematically,” he says, adding, “Descartes comes up with sort of magical solutions that [we] never came up with for the last 30 years of running the same routes.”

As customer orders come into Fairmount’s B2B ecommerce login customer portal, at b2b.fairmounttire.com, the tire distributor’s financial software generates electronic invoices that the delivery management system allocates to delivery trucks based on their availability and capacity.

One advantage of the new system is replacing a system that used to require three sheets of paper for each invoice. When drivers make deliveries, they use mobile devices stored with order details and e-invoices to receive customers’ digital signatures and generate delivery confirmation notes.

“We totally eliminated paper,” Dushane says.

Reworking delivery routes for more service and sales

In addition, Fairmount speeds up deliveries by using its software to arrange multiple orders on the same truck in a way that makes them faster to unload at each customer’s destination.

And that has opened the door to more sales opportunities as well as greater efficiency, Dushane says.

“We have been able to start to run second and third routes because of Descartes … because we know when the drivers will be coming back and what the trucks can be filled up to — there’s no obfuscation,” he says.

“We have fixed costs,” he adds. “So let’s use those fixed costs to the best of our ability.”

This article is included in a special report covering B2B digital technology trends and a preview of the 2023 EnvisionB2B Conference & Exhibition.

Scott Dushane will speak during a panel and workshop on order management, fulfillment and delivery operations at the 2023 EnvisionB2B Conference & Exhibition.

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The $140 million raised by Austin-based 8fig will be used by the company to make upgrades to its supply chain management software platform for online sellers and for offering B2B and B2C sellers new ways to finance operations and expansion.

“8fig is providing these online sellers with the financial support and tools necessary to thrive in any economic climate,” says CEO Yaron Shapira. “The latest funding round has proven that the market has great confidence in 8fig and the important role 8fig continues to play in the ongoing growth of ecommerce.”

The latest round of investment is from Koch Disruptive Technologies with participation from existing investors Battery Ventures and others. Since 8fig’s founding in 2020, it has raised more than $195.6 million in financing. It has provided more than $500 million in financing to online sellers, the company says.

“The global macroeconomic challenges we are experiencing make it difficult for ecommerce business owners to access the resources they need to succeed,” Shapira says.

The company provides growth plans for small and medium-sized ecommerce businesses that have some sales history. The plan includes funding and financial tools for supply chain management, financial planning, and freight and logistics coordination, according to Crunchbase.com.

With the new funding, 8fig plans to implement enhanced financial management capabilities for sellers, including more banking alternatives and cash flow prediction models that will include alerts and insights based on business performance. 8fig also says it is collaborating with ecommerce marketing agencies on a financial tool to evaluate their clients’ cash flow requirements and mitigate risks by providing alerts and actionable insights.

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Maeve Condell

There was the world before ChatGPT, and there is the world after ChatGPT.

In fact, ChatGPT’s emergence is being hailed as the next Industrial Revolution. With over a billion visitors per month, this generative AI tool is being rapidly adopted in fields ranging from creative industries like graphic design and content writing to more technical roles such as software development. Its potential has continued expanding into other arenas, including customer support.

No doubt, generative AI is the future of CX. And with 88% of business leaders reporting that their customers’ attitudes towards automation have improved over the past year — it’s no longer a matter of if you should look to automate your support but when.

The benefits for B2B ecommerce brands are clear. Since 80% of customers identify CX as a key differentiator and think it is just as important as products or services, gen AI is a crucial way to improve your customer support offering and get a leg up on your competitors. Yet, because this technology is relatively new, and many B2B companies have more complex product packages and setups, you may still be wondering how, in practice, generative AI can enhance your customer support.

First, let’s take a look at what makes generative AI tools like ChatGPT so much better than their predecessors in simulating human-like conversations. From there, we can better understand how this technology can optimize your customer support.

Generative AI’s technology and how it works

Before we explore some of the best use cases for generative AI in the B2B ecommerce support context, it’s a good idea to understand what the technology is and how it works. Gen AI refers to the particular iteration of artificial intelligence that powers tools like ChatGPT — as well as a growing host of other bots like DALL-E, Google’s Bard, and MidJourney. Gen AI is distinct from previous forms of automation because it enables bots to hold impressively natural conversations. This is because generative AI draws on large language models (LLMs) that, in the case of ChatGPT, have even passed the Turing test, a method of proving machine intelligence.

But what exactly is an LLM and why is it so revolutionary in the AI space? What sets these models apart is the use of “transformers” (as if there wasn’t already something so sci-fi and “Marvel-esque” about this technology). Transformers effectively in mimic human conversational style because they can process all inputs simultaneously rather than needing to be fed data sequentially. This means that, in the case of ChatGPT, the bot can process all of the written content on the internet (up until 2022) to generate the answer to a given prompt. This holistic processing capability allows it to produce responses with the context and tone you expect when talking with a regular person.

As you might have guessed by now, this can be especially useful for customer support automation. This is because a virtual agent that uses generative AI can seamlessly mimic your brand tone of voice as well as the conversational style of your human agents. As a result, you can offer an improved conversational experience for customers, make your support agents’ lives easier, and provide your customers with more than ever before.

The top 3 generative AI use cases revolutionizing CX in the B2B space:

1 – A more advanced conversational experience for customers

With generative AI offering such natural and human-like conversations, you don’t have to worry about automation damaging the customer experience with your brand. With the help of generative AI, the virtual agent can instantly pull info from your FAQ pages, knowledge base, help center, or any other company page — and serve this to customers in a natural, conversational way. There’s no training required, and you can get started in minutes.

As long as a topic is covered in your help center, the bot can process all of the articles available to answer customer queries. So, if a customer asks, ‘Where can I find and download my last invoice?’ the bot can instantly provide instructions.

In this scenario, your customers can have their cake and eat it too — by getting the information they need much more quickly through self-service, without losing the conversational format of speaking with a human agent. This will boost your automation rate, while ensuring that your customers still feel supported with high quality customer service.

2 – Assisting support agents

While a virtual agent powered by generative AI may be able to effectively do the work of several human agents, it doesn’t mean that they will be replacing them anytime soon. Rather, automation serves as a tool that can help agents to do their jobs better. For instance, a virtual agent that uses generative AI can offer a more seamless transition from bot to human agent by helping to structure, summarize, and automatically populate tickets so agents don’t have to. This will lead to much faster response times and a cleaner handover to agents in cases the bot can’t fully resolve. In addition, agents can prompt generative AI to offer suggested replies that help them to draft responses more efficiently.

These things can be a major game-changer in the event of an uptick in queries, unexpected or otherwise. This makes automation useful for answering simple questions like order status or requesting a password change. It also helps to free up agents’ time to deal with more complicated issues. For B2B ecommerce brands where queries can be complex and technical, having a primer from the bot allows agents to hit the ground running when addressing customer issues. With the help of generative AI, the bot assists your agents in having better and faster insights into customers’ needs and helps your team work more efficiently.

3 – Understanding your customers and what they’re asking

Lastly, generative AI will help you to educate your customers and offer them even more value than they were expecting from interactions with your support team. Businesses often shop around between different suppliers before making a purchase, so you want them to discover the unique selling point of your product offerings as quickly as possible. This discovery process is where generative AI comes in. It can comb your existing content to offer useful, educational suggestions to answer any pre-purchase questions. It can also provide such content to busy support agents when prompted. Through the transformer model that powers it, generative AI can instantly serve up this information without needing to be manually updated as you publish new content on your site.

Conclusion

Generative AI is the latest and most sophisticated edition of automation technology, and it has real potential to optimize the B2B customer experience. In particular, it has the capacity to mimic natural conversations, assist your agents in structuring support tickets, and provide customers with an enriched support experience — all without hiring any extra agents. It’s a time-efficient, affordable, and scalable solution to mitigating long wait times, depersonalized CX, and clunky self-service offerings. While the technology may be new, the sky is hardly the limit on its potential for supercharging your CX as the number of applicable use cases only continues to grow.

About the author:

Maeve Condell is a solution architect at Ultimate, a customer service automation company. Her focus is on combining AI and conversation design to build personalized virtual agents.

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Christopher Schutts, CEO, Logik.io

The company will expand its market strategy with $16 million in a Series A funding round, Logik.io announced today.

“Many B2B companies struggle to deliver the low-touch consumerized experiences customers demand today,” co-founder and CEO Christopher Shutts said. “But the businesses who are leading their industries understand that no matter how complex your products are, buyers seek out businesses who make it simple to find, configure, and augment purchases across any channel.”

Logik.io’s clients include Keysight Technologies and Club Car

Logik says its Commerce Logic Engine technology is designed to help B2B buyers find and configure complex products and services from manufacturers, SaaS software providers and service companies. Logik’s customer base includes electric testing equipment manufacturer Keysight Technologies and Club Car, a maker of golf carts and utility vehicles.

The $16 million funding was led by Emergence Capital and joined by ServiceNow Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. Logik.io has now raised a total $26 million since Schutts and Logik.io chairman Godard Abel co-founded the company in 2021. Santi Subotovsky, general partner at Emergence Capital, will join the Logik.io board.

Prior to Logik.io, Schutts and Abel co-founded BigMachines, a configure-price-quote software provider they sold in 2013 to Oracle Corp., which renamed it Oracle CPQ.

Abel also developed Steelbrick, a CPQ software firm now part of Salesforce Inc. In addition, Abel is co-founder and CEO of G2.com, an AI- and ChatGTP-backed online information resource for business software.

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Kris Harrington

In today’s dynamic business environment, staying competitive requires a more dynamic approach to utilizing your organization’s valuable resources. As an original equipment manufacturer or after-sales leader, your teams should be focused on delivering exceptional products, enriching customer experiences, and driving revenue growth.

However, some companies still rely on outdated practices, operating as mere ‘order-takers’ and spending a significant amount of time on administrative tasks, rather than adding value to their customers. And adding value can make a massive impact for OEMs.

If your organization is more focused on order-taking tasks than creating value for your customers, you may be at risk of falling behind. Here are three telltale signs that your organization operates as an “order-processing center”:

● Customer service teams are spending most of their time responding to customer inquiries for parts identification, price, availability, and order-related tasks.

● The organization is relying heavily on manual workflows and paperwork to manage orders, returns, and warranty claims.

● The organization is not leveraging technology or automation to streamline processes, reduce errors, and improve customer experiences.

So, what can you do to move away from an order-taking culture and start focusing on value-adding activities? Here are five things that OEM and after-sales leaders should consider:

1–Implement a digital self-service platform. One of the most effective ways to reduce the burden of order-taking on your customer service teams is to provide customers with self-service options. This can include customer or dealer portals that allow customers to access product information, place orders, track shipments, and request support without having to engage with customer service representatives every step of the way. By enabling users to self-serve, you can reduce the volume of calls and emails your customer service teams receive and free up their time to focus on more strategic activities.

2–Automate order processing and fulfillment. By integrating EDI and ERP systems, businesses can streamline operations, reduce errors, and improve customer satisfaction. For example, automated order processing and fulfillment allow companies to allocate inventory, generate pick lists, and create shipping labels automatically. This automation helps reduce the burden on customer service teams and will let them focus on more strategic initiatives. Additionally, automation provides real-time visibility into inventory levels, order status, and delivery tracking, which enables businesses to manage their operations and improve customer service proactively.

3–Use data analytics to anticipate customer needs. Rather than waiting for customers to contact you with their needs, you can use data analytics to anticipate their needs proactively. By analyzing customer behavior and buying patterns, you can identify which products or services they are likely to need next and offer them personalized recommendations or promotions that encourage repeat business. This use of analytics can help you build stronger customer relationships, increase revenue, and reduce the need for reactive order-taking.

4–Invest in training and development for customer service teams. While digital self-service and automation can help reduce the burden of order-taking on your customer service teams, they still play a critical role in ensuring customer satisfaction. That’s why it’s important to invest in training and development programs that equip your customer service teams with the skills and knowledge they need to handle complex inquiries, resolve customer issues, and provide exceptional service. By empowering your customer service teams to add value, you can differentiate your organization from competitors and build a loyal customer base.

5–Create a culture of continuous improvement. Finally, it’s important to create a culture of continuous improvement that encourages experimentation, innovation, and collaboration across your organization. This can include regularly reviewing and analyzing customer feedback, identifying areas for improvement, and testing new processes and technologies to drive efficiency and customer satisfaction. By embracing a culture of continuous improvement, you can position your organization for long-term success and move away from a culture of order-takers to a culture of value-creators.

The pressure to deliver more value to your dealers and customers is greater than ever, and organizations that fail to prioritize this customer service strategy risk losing market share. By implementing the steps outlined in this blog, OEM and after-sales leaders can optimize their operations, improve customer experiences, and set themselves up for success in the years to come.

About the author

Kristina Harrington is the co-founder and CEO of GenAlpha Technologies, which provides digital commerce technology for manufacturers. Prior to GenAlpha, Kris worked for more than 10 years in leadership positions at two large multinational original equipment manufacturers, Bucyrus International and Caterpillar, supporting the mining industry. In her various positions, she worked with internal stakeholders, dealers, and customers to deliver business results both in aftermarket and equipment sales. She can be reached at kharrington@genalpha.com.

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Target sales

Q1 comparable digital sales dropped 3.4%, versus a 3.2% rise in the year-earlier period.

Target said its digitally originated sales — transactions that can be attributed to its website and apps, including online purchases and buy online, pick up in store — fell to 17.5% of total sales from 18.2% in the comparable period of 2022.

Same-day services (Order Pickup, Drive Up and Shipt) saw mid-single digit growth in the first quarter, led by high-single digit growth in Drive Up.

Net income dropped 5.8% to $950 million from $1.01 billion in Q1 2022.

Organized retail crime

In a written statement, CEO Brian Cornell said the retailer expects that shrink will slash some $500 million from Target’s profitability in 2023.

“While there are many potential sources of inventory shrink, theft and organized retail crime are increasingly important drivers of the issue,” Cornell said. “We are making significant investments in strategies to prevent this from happening in our stores and protect our guests and our team. We’re also focused on managing the financial impact on our business so we can continue to keep our stores open, knowing they create local jobs and offer convenient access to essentials.”

Target ranks No. 5 in the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers by web sales.

Margins and inventory

First quarter operating income margin rate was 5.2% in 2023, compared with 5.3% in Q1 2022.

A decline in an operating income margin rate is generally seen as evidence of inventory discounting. Target announced in June that it would dramatically reduce inventory by slashing prices after supply-chain woes across the retail industry led to a surge in unsold goods.

Inventory at the end of Q1 was 16% lower than the year-earlier quarter. That reflects a more than 25% reduction in discretionary categories.

Outlook

Target maintained its previous sales and profit outlook for the year.

For comparable sales in the second quarter, Minneapolis-based Target said it’s planning for a wide range of outcomes “centered around a low-single-digit decline,” according to a written statement accompanying the earnings report.

Target’s sober outlook for its fiscal second quarter, which began in late April, will do little to assuage worries about weakening U.S. consumer spending, said Adam Crisafulli, an analyst at Vital Knowledge.

“Target could have been worse, but it’s still not good,” Crisafulli said in a note to clients.

Q1 2023 Target earnings

For the three months ending April 29, 2023, Target reported:

• Revenue from sales of $24.95 billion, a 0.5% rise from the $24.83 billion in sales a year earlier.
• A 0.4% rise in the cost of sales to $18.39 billion from $18.46 billion in the comparable quarter of 2022.
• Net earnings of $950 million, a 5.8% drop from the $1.01 billion reported in Q1 2022.

Bloomberg News contributed to this report.

Percentage changes may not align exactly with dollar figures due to rounding. Check back for more earnings reports.

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Emily Newton

Many new ChatGPT supply chain applications are emerging as generative AI becomes more advanced. So how can industry professionals utilize this technology effectively? They can use ChatGPT in several critical ways, primarily communication and automation.

1. Supply Chain Customer Service

Customer service is one of the most promising applications for ChatGPT in the supply chain. The natural language processing capabilities of ChatGPT are among the most advanced ever developed for popular use. This makes it an ideal tool for navigating the complex communication required in customer service tasks.

Any developer can integrate ChatGPT into their apps today using OpenAI’s official API for the algorithm. ChatGPT’s language processing skills can be applied to any customer-facing application in the supply chain, whether B2B or B2C. For example, a supplier could create a ChatGPT app for its manufacturing customers to track shipments of materials and resources.

2. Translation and International Relations

Succeeding in today’s supply chain requires working closely with partners worldwide. Unfortunately, language barriers make this challenging, potentially hindering organization and efficiency. Luckily, translation is a great way to use ChatGPT in the supply chain.

Research shows that users don’t need to specify the source language of a text passage for ChatGPT to translate it successfully. The algorithm can autonomously detect the source language and translate it in seconds.

ChatGPT’s performance is also on par or better than most digital translation tools available today. The fact that it can process natural language, including advanced technical terminology, gives it a major advantage over competitors. Its accessibility makes it ideal for supply chain applications, which rely on quick turnaround times and clear communication.

Using ChatGPT for translation can strengthen collaboration with international supply chain partners, improving efficiency and organization for everyone involved.

3. Automating Business Tasks

Businesses can use ChatGPT in the supply chain to automate various everyday tasks. For example, it can summarize a sales report, extract the highlights from a spreadsheet or draft an email. These tasks might seem small, but they help supply chain professionals work more efficiently.

ChatGPT can even be helpful for complex logistics tasks. AI is already making advances in logistics. For example, algorithms can automate order processing and help managers identify important insights in their data. This could include tasks like analyzing a list of suppliers to find those with the best rates or assessing various packaging options for the most cost-effective solution.

ChatGPT takes existing applications for AI in robotic process automation a step further. Advanced natural language processing helps it handle more complex content and user requests. Even integrating it into a larger automated system could improve performance.

4. Personalized Employee Training

ChatGPT is a great tool for improving employee training. This is especially helpful today since many supply chain businesses are adapting to new technologies and grappling with labor shortages. Surveys show 57% of supply chain leaders report hiring and retaining employees as their top challenge. Additionally, 41% have issues upskilling or reskilling existing workers.

Supply chain businesses can help alleviate these challenges by integrating ChatGPT into their training programs. It can serve as a multipurpose assistant for trainees by answering questions, explaining complex topics, and creating practice tests and flashcards. Employees can use ChatGPT to get a personalized training experience catered to their needs and learning styles.

Some trainees might quickly grasp a new technology, while others will want more time to explore definitions, technical terminology and other background information. ChatGPT can serve various training approaches, making it a versatile tool for providing more efficient employee training.

5. Data Analysis and Visualization

Data analysis and visualization is a lesser-known application for ChatGPT in the supply chain. Most people think of it as a language-specific AI, but it can also process numerical data.

Rapid and accessible data analysis tools are vital today. Data-driven insights and decisions are a cornerstone of Industry 4.0, which is rapidly reshaping the supply chain. ChatGPT makes basic AI analytics quick and straightforward. Anyone can paste a set of unstructured information into ChatGPT and ask it to summarize or organize it into a table.

Automating this task allows supply chain employees to have a more efficient workflow and leverage data more easily. ChatGPT can’t do complex data analytics yet, but it can handle many basic processes that are helpful for quickly getting an overview of a data set.

6. Idea Generation

Idea generation is a unique application for ChatGPT in the supply chain. Businesses need creative solutions to new challenges as things become more complex. Generative AI platforms like ChatGPT can be surprisingly helpful in the brainstorming process.

An AI might pinpoint unconventional solutions or ideas a human would not have considered. ChatGPT’s suggestions may not always be usable or feasible, but they provide a unique perspective that can spark creativity among team members.

Potential Drawbacks of ChatGPT

ChatGPT may be a powerful tool for certain applications, but it isn’t perfect. Business leaders should know about the drawbacks and challenges of adopting ChatGPT.

For example, ChatGPT has been known to give users inaccurate or completely made-up information. The AI’s language processing skills allow it to convey this false data convincingly, making it challenging to detect accuracy at a glance. Some groups, such as the coding help site Stack Overflow, are even banning ChatGPT due to the spread of misinformation.

This broadcast ofmisinformation is a huge problem in applications where users may be poorly equipped to verify that ChatGPT’s generated text is accurate. For example, using the AI for translating could lead to confusion if ChatGPT misunderstands the input or output language. Similarly, a new employee using ChatGPT for job training might learn incorrect information due to answer errors.

These issues may improve with time. The latest version of ChatGPT, GPT-4, is reportedly 40% more likely to give factual data, according to developer OpenAI. However, it will likely take years for ChatGPT to become a reliable source of information. Even then, there is always a chance the AI could “hallucinate” incorrect conclusions from the given data. ChatGPT’s output should always be fact-checked.

Adopting ChatGPT in the Supply Chain

There are many ways to use ChatGPT in the supply chain today, ranging from translation to employee training to logistics automation. Businesses can improve efficiency and productivity by integrating it into their workflows. OpenAI offers an API any developer can use to build ChatGPT into their app or website. In the years ahead, more supply chain applications will likely emerge as the technology advances.

About the author:

Emily Newton is an industrial writer reporting on how technology disrupts industrial sectors. She’s also the editor-in-chief of Revolutionized, covering innovations in industry, construction, and more.

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IBT Industrial Solutions — an industrial products distributor for factories and warehouses in such industries as manufacturing, food processing, packaging, bottling, and power generation — realized the need to deliver more personalized online buying experiences to its customers after it launched a B2B ecommerce site two years ago.

Carin Sampson, vice president, human resources and marketing, IBT Industrial Solutions

IBT learned that its online customers fall into two distinct categories: legacy customers who transitioned to digital purchasing and digital-first customers who have long preferred the online channel and started doing business with IBT after its website launched. Each customer segment has its own needs when it comes to ecommerce and uses the company’s website differently when purchasing.

For example, legacy customers will search for products ranging from industrial motors and metalworking tools to safety equipment and janitorial supplies by part numbers. In contrast, digital-first customers will search by keywords.

Helping customers manage their overall buying process

At the same time, legacy customers tend to view IBT’s website as a self-service purchasing tool, but digital-first customers expect the site to help them better manage their overall buying processes. The latter often want to reorder products in one click and access and print past orders and invoices.

But IBT realized it developed its ecommerce site primarily to service the needs of its legacy customers, which led to lower conversions rates and sales among digital-first buyers.

“Our site was set up to support legacy customers, which is why we did not have as much success with digital-first customers,” says Carin Sampson, who leads IBT’s ecommerce strategy in her role as vice president of human resources and marketing. “We had a group of beta testers that we tailored the site to, but we didn’t turn the lessons learned from that group into something more scalable for a broader audience.”

IBT worked with digital agency Xngage to deploy and modify its new ecommerce site on software from Optimizely.

IBT generates about $200 million in sales annually through its ecommerce site. Since launching the site, it has started a personalization strategy that makes its site search more dynamic, leveraging buyers’ online purchasing behavior for product recommendations and personalized videos and marketing messages.

To improve its site search, IBT is looking at adding artificial intelligence capabilities that predict a customer’s keyword search term, then displays relevant results. This capability is expected to reduce friction during search and the purchasing experience.

Applying AI to personalized videos

On the product recommendations side, IBT plans to begin leveraging past customer purchasing data to recommend relevant products and brands. The company is also looking at applications that will allow it to track a newer buyer’s behavior on the site to make product recommendations, as opposed to relying on the buyer’s past online purchasing history, which may be thin or nonexistent.

The idea for adding personalized videos grew from research IBT conducted into how artificial intelligence can improve personalization.

“AI is something I follow, and there are lot of innovative ways it is being used — and personalized videos are one of them,” Sampson says. “There are companies that produce personalized videos using AI, and our aim is to explore this space and experiment with how we can use personalized videos to engage customers.”

Key to making its personalization strategy work will be integrating new personalization engines and tools to its ecommerce platform. As part of its personalization strategy, IBT is upgrading its enterprise resource planning system to help improve data flow between the ERP software and IBT’s ecommerce platform.

“Our legacy ERP predates APIs, and that’s where the complexity with integration comes in,” says Sampson, who adds the company’s ecommerce platform integrates easily with its product information management (PIM) system. “For us, it’s about the tech stack, not one app.”

Making the buyer’s job easier

Once IBT completely installs its new ERP system, Sampson says the company will be able to make relevant product recommendations for each customer, whatever their interests.

In addition, IBT is looking to add predictive analytics to forecast what products customers are likely to buy, helping IBT to achieve the right balance in its catalog. The company has more than 2 million SKUs in its ERP system.

“Right now, we can get data on what a customer buys and how often, but we can’t predict what they are likely to buy,” Sampson says. “That is a capability we want to pull into the personalization mix.”

Having predictive capabilities will also open the door for IBT to proactively reach out to customers. For example, the distributor plans to use customer purchasing histories to identify products that are regularly reordered and at what intervals, so it can send reminders to customers when the time to place a reorder is approaching.

“Customers care about convenience and proactive service, whether it be a reminder to reorder a product or predictive maintenance,” says Sampson. “Providing convenience makes the customer’s job easier.”

Steady increases in ecommerce sales

Overall, ecommerce sales for the company are showing steady growth. During the first few months of 2023, ecommerce sales grew about 20% compared with the same period a year earlier. This growth comes after ecommerce sales more than doubled in 2022 over 2021.

“The growth through our digital channel is outpacing growth in traditional sales channels,” Sampson says.

Another area where IBT is improving the buying experience is by reducing the number of products in its online catalog in favor of higher-quality products buyers want.

“Initially, we focused on quantity, but we have found we would have benefitted more with a ‘less is more’ approach first,” Sampson says. “Having built our site for existing customers, we now know we need to provide features that appeal to digital-first customers if we are to build strong relationships with them.”

Carin Sampson, vice president of human resources and marketing, IBT Industrial Solutions, will speak at the EnvisionB2B 2023 Conference & Exhibition on integrating ERP and ecommerce technology and building resilient supply chains.

Peter Lucas is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy.

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact editor Paul Demery at paul@digitalcommerce360.com and follow him on Twitter @pdemery.

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Melanie Cochran, vice president, Hawkins HVAC Distributors Inc.

And in an uncommon approach in its industry, it’s stepping up its digital ecommerce technology and operations to implement that growth strategy.

“In general, HVAC is a little behind the curve in digital transformation,” says Melanie Cochran, vice president of operations, whose family has roots going back decades in the HVAC industry.

The industry is not without ecommerce expertise, as shown by Watsco Inc., a multibillion-dollar national distributor that for years has racked up steady ecommerce sales at a high percentage of its total revenue. But for legions of smaller HVAC distributors that serve local or regional markets, ecommerce is still an opportunity to explore, Cochran says.

In her company’s core market of North and South Carolina and parts of Georgia, she adds, Hawkins is determined to stand out with a digital commerce strategy that complements the Charlotte, North Carolina-based distributor’s industry experience to bring exceptional value in the buying experience to its dealer network, she says.

“We know our industry is lagging in ecommerce, but we know it’s going to come on, and we want to be part of that,” Cochran says. “We want to be a leader of that change.”

Taking that leading ecommerce position rides on how well Hawkins convinces many of its customers to get on board with online purchasing — and on how well it upgrades the online customer buying experience on HawkinsHVAC.com to win over those customers.

Hawkins is off to a promising start as it sets up long-term growth online.

Relaunching a more personalized ecommerce site

The company relaunched its website, at HawkinsHVAC.com, in the fall of 2021, replacing a legacy site with a new level of personalized content and an online buying experience that Hawkins figures it needs to engage online customers.

Hawkins HVAC Distributors’ Charlotte, North Carolina, corporate office.

The privately held company doesn’t publicize sales figures. But Cochran notes that, after launching the new site at the tail end of that year’s peak selling season with 5,000 available SKUs, Hawkins quickly got to 7% to 8% of total sales online, with an average order value of over $1,400 for a mix of HVAC equipment, replacement parts, and supplies.

“For the first year, that was pretty strong for us,” Cochran says.

More significant, however, is that most of the buyers placing the online orders are from Hawkins’s largest customers — a market segment where the distributor is planning on strong sales growth over the long term.

Cochran notes that her company’s ecommerce volume continues to increase, and, over the longer term, Hawkins expects ecommerce to account for about 25% of sales. “Ecommerce is not a huge channel yet for us, but we expect it to be,” she says.

To drive growth, Hawkins has deployed a digital commerce technology platform offering multiple improvements over the prior website, including:

• Product catalogs offering personalized product pricing and selection for each dealer.
• Letting dealers search on multiple product attributes to find exactly what they need.
• Enabling dealers to find the nearest Hawkins distribution branch location when they want to pick up products.
• Educational online content designed to help buyers determine which products suit their job site needs.
• The ability to more easily build new customer-serving features.

Hawkins is operating its new ecommerce system on Amla Commerce Inc.’s Znode headless commerce technology platform, which uses an extensive system of APIs (application programming interfaces) to share data between three independent components: the customer-facing online interface, the ecommerce engine, and the enterprise resource planning system. Hawkins retained Xngage, a B2B digital commerce services firm, to implement the Znode platform and integrate it with the distributor’s related technology systems.

In addition to the Znode ecommerce platform and customer-facing website, Hawkins’s digital technology infrastructure includes:

• Infor CloudSuite Distribution enterprise resource planning software.
• AD product information management (PIM), from the AD (Affiliated Distributors) distributors’ organization, as well as a built-in Znode PIM.
• Billtrust invoice management, which lets HVAC dealers on HawkinsHVAC.com link to Billtrust to view and manage their Hawkins invoices.

The new platform, Cochran says, was a good fit to integrate with the distribution company’s digital technology ecosystem, helping to provide the kind of personalized buying experience its dealers want. For example, the API-driven headless configuration enables Hawkins to modify the customer-facing interface without also having to redo the software in the ecommerce engine or the back-end business operations software in the ERP system.

At first, Hawkins was wary of relying on APIs

The commerce platform uses APIs to transfer information between the Infor ERP, the AD PIM (which uses EnterWorks PIM software) and the Znode ecommerce platform, providing ecommerce customers with such information as up-to-date product descriptions, the location of available inventory by distribution center, and order status.

At first, Hawkins was wary of going with a new ecommerce platform that relied heavily on APIs, as is the case with Znode.

“We were nervous about that because with our original ecommerce platform, one of the main issues we had was speed and lag time,” Cochran says, adding, “The folks we were using at the time were blaming that [slow] speed on APIs, so we were nervous about having another system that was built off of APIs.”

But she adds that Znode, which Hawkins came to know through Xngage and AD, has so far proved to be an effective platform for building digital commerce. AD is an organization that serves as a buying group for its membership of independent distributors.

Quick-order forms and online inventory management

In addition to providing personalized product catalogs and pricing, Hawkins is also developing online features and promotions to improve the online buying experience and generate more sales. For example, returning customers can use a quick-order feature to reorder parts by simply inserting the Hawkins part identification numbers and the needed quantity, then clicking Add to Cart.

When one new large customer wanted to start placing orders with its own system of parts numbers, Hawkins was able customize its product data management to accommodate the customer.

“So that customer can log onto our website and not only see their pricing and our inventory levels, but they can also search for products with the numbers they already know,” Cochran says.

Going forward, she adds, Hawkins will look into further adding to its customers’ online buying experience, features that would appeal to large customers in a market extending far beyond its current base in the Carolinas.

Building an ecommerce-based replenishment system

One project on the drawing boards is building an ecommerce-based system to replenish the HVAC parts and supplies inventory that dealers keep on their service trucks and in storerooms. By scanning products as they use them on customer service calls, dealers and their technicians will be able to trigger online orders to maintain a minimum level of on-hand inventory. Another version of this replenishment system would let dealers review their updated on-hand inventory status at the end of each day or week, then click to place an order based on that status plus any additional products they need to satisfy large orders known to be coming in from dealers.

In addition, the internet-based electronic inventory management system would also track parts and supplies usage by individual technicians, helping contractors to better control inventory and view the performance of individual workers, Cochran says.

Such reordering and inventory-management and -visibility features may be common among large B2B companies in industries such as maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) products. Among HVAC distributors, however, it’s far from a common strategy, she says.

But that void presents an opportunity for Hawkins to stand out.

“One of our goals is really to just be innovative in this industry,” Cochran says.

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