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 report, B2B Ecommerce Technology Trends + EnvisionB2B 2023 Preview, includes several reviews of B2B companies and a preview of the full EnvisionB2B agenda, which features more than 50 speakers and 25 sessions. EnvisionB2B is scheduled for June 20 – 22 at the Hilton Chicago.

Joe Cicman, senior analyst, Forrester Research Inc.

Joe Cicman, senior analyst for B2B digital commerce at Forrester Research, asserts that B2B sellers must review the functions that address the challenges they face in serving customers, then identify the ecommerce technology platform that covers those functions.

At EnvisionB2B 2023 next month, Cicman will refer to findings of a recent joint Forrester and Digital Commerce 360 B2B Digital Buyer study and discuss with Val DuVernet, senior director of digital strategy at pharmaceutical distributor McKesson Corp., the intersection of online B2B buyer demands and ecommerce technology strategies.

Among the survey’s findings: 70% of B2B buyers will increase their online purchasing of good and services this year, and buyers’ prefer purchasing on manufacturers’ ecommerce sites because of the quality of their product information. Those findings show that B2B sellers must find the right ecommerce technology to offer customers the best buying experience, Cicman says.

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

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

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. Alvarez will lead an EnvisionB2B panel discussion and workshop on customer loyalty strategies.

He asserts that, 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.

Manufacturers and distributors push ahead with ecommerce

Brent Steffen, director of ecommerce, Caterpillar Inc.

“Everything we are doing with digital is about creating integrated and seamless experiences for our customers that help them be more efficient,” says Brent Steffen,  Caterpillar Inc.’s director of ecommerce, who will give a June 21 keynote address about innovation in B2B ecommerce at EnvisionB2B 2023.

With corporate roots going back to 1873 and annual sales of more than $6 billion, Konica Minolta Inc. is well known as a global manufacturer and marketer of digital imaging products used in corporate and institutional facilities worldwide.

But the company is ready to reach and engage more customers more often, which is why it’s forging into B2B ecommerce.

Velinda Cox, vice president of ecommerce, Konica Minolta

“We are in a position of transition, change and transformation,” says Velinda Cox, senior vice president of ecommerce at Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. Inc., in Ramsey, New Jersey, where she is spearheading the global company’s ecommerce strategy. Cox will give a June 22 EnvisionB2B keynote address on developing a new strategy for digital ecommerce and a supportive technology ecosystem.

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MSC Industrial ecommerce sales

Total ecommerce sales increased 0.05% year over year to $595.8 million for the fiscal second quarter ended March 4. MSC Industrial ecommerce sales amount to 62% of total sales. In comparison, total sales increased 0.04% to $961.6 million.

“We think we can be doing better,” Gershwind said on a second-quarter earnings call. He added that improvements were already well under way with digital technology under the leadership of MSC’s first chief digital officer.

John Hill, chief digital and information officer, MSC Industrial Supply Co.

“It’s been nearly a year since John Hill joined us as MSC’s first chief digital and information officer, and progress with our technology function is encouraging,” Gershwind said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript of the earnings call. “We are enhancing our ecommerce functionality and expect to see incremental benefits in the coming quarters.”

Increasingly digital

Kristen Actis-Grande, chief financial officer, also noted that one of MSC’s priorities “is digital, which includes all aspects of MSC’s digital engagement with customers, suppliers and associates.”

When asked on the earnings call how MSC was growing sales among smaller companies and government agencies as well as larger companies, Gerswhind again cited ecommerce as critical to its strategy.

“Ecommerce has application across the board, all customer sizes,” Gershwind said. “But certainly for smaller customers, the enhancements we’re putting in place, we’re already doing pretty well in ecommerce.”

He added, “We are improving our product information and customer data, making for a better customer service experience and a more efficient business.”

Ecommerce sales were also helped by MSC’s growth of internet-connected vending machines.

“Vending machine net sales grew mid-teens year over year and reached $89.4 million, representing 15% of total net sales,” MSC said.

MSC also continues to drive growth through acquisition. In January, it completed the acquisition of two Ohio-based distributors:

• Buckeye Industrial Supply Co., a metalworking products distributor that caters to manufacturers
• True-Edge Grinding, which brings MSC “new capabilities in customer tool manufacturing and grinding,” Gershwind said.

Speaking at EnvisionB2B 2023

John Hill, MSC’s chief digital and information officer, will give a keynote address at Digital Commerce 360’s EnvisionB2B 2023 Conference & Exhibition in June in Chicago.

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Bob Howland, chief digital officer, Dawn Foods

Bob Howland, chief digital officer at bakery ingredients manufacturer Dawn Foods, explains the critical importance of focusing on customer needs as B2B companies deploy the latest ecommerce technology.

Howland is a speaker for the June 21 “Why We Chose Headless” session at the EnvisionB2B 2023 Conference & Exhibition in Chicago.

DC 360: What is driving B2B companies like Dawn Foods to expand online?

Howland: Two things. First — the customer. Our customers are already online and routinely order supplies from Amazon, Walmart, Costco, and more to help run their businesses. They have been asking for online ordering from us for years, and we are the first bakery ingredient manufacturer and distributor to launch an ecommerce platform. Second — our competition. We feel that building an online product catalog enables our customers to see the full scope of products available to them. We are now moving from online ordering toward full end-to-end digital experiences. All of these new tools and services give us a clear competitive advantage.

DC 360: What are your biggest internal and/or external barriers?

Howland: At the highest level, this is a digital transformation project across all of our main functions. The lift to get the organization’s business processes documented and our systems readied so that we could build the ecommerce platform was Herculean. We are now focused on breaking down silos and helping key functions build their ecommerce muscle so that we can collectively operate as an ecommerce business. It’s a tall order, yet the benefits of automated business processes, building modern infrastructure, and creating remarkable customer experiences are clear.

DC 360: What are the chief gains you’re realizing?

Howland: This may be a less traditional answer, but a clear gain is organizational pride. Launching an ecommerce platform from scratch touched every part of the company. We launched on time, on budget, and on strategy. This achievement drove a huge sense of accomplishment and a renewed sense that, together, we can move mountains. Of course, you are looking for business and financial gains. We have seen gains in customer retention, increased basket size, and overall engagement. All measured through our robust Voice of the Customer program.

DC 360: What is the most valuable piece of advice you have on how to launch online B2B sales or increase them?

Howland: Two things. First, it’s critical to really understand the customer perspective. We launched a beta platform in two markets to get direct customer input, which was invaluable. And we ran the beta for close to a year so that we had a real-time pipeline for customer feedback as we created the user stories which served as the backbone for the build.

Second, it’s important to realize that launching online B2B sales for the first time is a huge transformation exercise. This requires executive alignment and a company-wide effort. I’d suggest an organization hires someone that has done this before and can articulate a plan across people, processes, and potential technologies to own the initiative in partnership with the broader change-management work.

DC 360: Looking back over the past few years, is there anything you wish you had done differently in ecommerce?

Howland: We are a 100-plus-year-old company. I’m proud of the business for how well we’ve adopted ecommerce and appreciative for all of the top-down support. While we launched our first ecommerce platform in 2020, we are very much still in the early stages of our digital journey. Much of my time is still focused on the massive change-management effort. The pace of change is slower than I’d like yet some of this simply needs to happen organically.

DC 360: What excites you the most in new digital commerce technology?

Howland: Where do I start! This is an exciting time to be in digital and technology in general. The shift away from monoliths to a more modern, composable architecture really liberates ecommerce leaders and allows us to create ecommerce platforms which we can control, and which can really be nimble in responding to customer and market dynamics. We’ve been early advocates for MACH (for Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless), and have been involved with the MACH Alliance from its inception to be an agent of change across the board.

DC 360: Going forward, what do you see as the most significant commerce challenges and opportunities?

Howland: There has never been a better time to be a digital leader. The opportunities ahead are virtually limitless. The caution in all of this is to constantly sift through the noise and shiny objects to ensure that you have both the simplest solution possible and maintain a laser focus on customer utility. Ultimately our customers come to our sites with a job they need to do. This is especially true within the context of B2B organizations. Most sites ignore this fundamental dynamic and overwhelm the customer. Respect the customer — each individual customer — and work hard to keep things simple.

Jim Daly is a DC360 contributing editor covering digital business technology and strategy.

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DG Macpherson, chairman and CEO, W.W. Grainger Inc.

Sales at W.W. Grainger Inc.’s full-service and web-only businesses drove the industrial products distributor’s total 2022 sales up 16.9% year over year to $15.2 billion, chairman and CEO DG Macpherson said today.

For the fourth quarter, total sales increased 13.2% year over year to $3.8 billion. Grainger, a prominent distributor of maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) products, didn’t break out total ecommerce sales for the full year or Q4. But it has said in in prior financial reporting that more than 75% of orders originate through Grainger’s digital channels.

Zoro surpasses $1 billion in annual sales

But Macpherson said in an earnings call that web-only sales in its Endless Assortment segment, including Zoro.com in the United States and Japan-based MonotaRo.com, increased 0.9% year over year to $670 million; adjusting for depreciation of the Japanese yen, Endless Assortment sales rose 16.8% in constant currency.

In addition, Deidra Merriwether, chief financial officer, noted that Zoro’s 2022 sales surpassed $1 billion for the first time in a 12-month period. Grainger says Zoro and MonotaRo cater to smaller companies with less complex needs compared with the larger customers served by Grainger’s High-Touch Solutions segment, which includes the flagship Grainger.com and Grainger’s sales team.

Grainger also said Zoro ended the year with 4.57 million registered users. That’s up 17% from 3.92 million a year earlier. At the same time, Zoro increased its number of SKUs 28% to 11.1 million. Zoro is on course to add about 2 million SKUs annually over the next several years, Grainger said.

Deidra “Dee” Merriwether, chief financial officer, W.W. Grainger Inc.

Grainger said Q4 High-Touch Solutions sales increased 16.8% to $3.07 billion, as the segment’s operating earnings rose 32.9% to $477 million.

In 2023, Merriwether said, Grainger expects ongoing revenue growth to more than $16 billion will support significant investments in technology and services. The company expects to generate 2023 cash flow from $1.45 billion to $1.65 billion. That’s an increase of over $215 million by mid-year compared with 2022. It plans 2023 capital spending within range of $450-$525 million, investing in its distribution center network, customer experience, and product information technology.

In addition, Grainger will invest this year in “our environmental, social and governance objectives internally and supporting our customers to help them achieve their own ESG goals,” Merriwether said.

Zoro executive to speak at EnvisionB2B 2023

Zoro chief merchandising officer Sandy Mattinson will be a featured keynote speaker at EnvisionB2B 2023 June 20-22 at the Chicago Hilton in downtown Chicago.

She will deliver a fireside on Wednesday, June 21, 2023, from 9:30 a.m to 10 a.m.

Mattinson will discuss how the distributor anticipates dynamic change in digital commerce, executes a flexible and winning ecommerce strategy, and how other organizations can do the same.

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That strategy is already paying off in digital commerce figures reported for the fiscal 2023 first quarter, which ended Dec. 3, CEO Erik Gershwind said yesterday. Q1 ecommerce sales grew 15.6% year over year to $592.9 million and accounted for 61.9% of total sales.

John Hill, senior vice president and chief digital officer, MSC Industrial Supply Co.

MSC — a prominent distributor of metalworking and maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) products — is no stranger to strong digital sales, which have routinely accounted for well over half of total sales in recent years. Q1 ecommerce reached nearly 62% of total sales, and, under MSC’s new chief digital officer, John Hill, the company is laying the groundwork for continued growth in digital sales.

“John Hill and his team have completed a comprehensive review of our entire digital offering and have built a roadmap for our evolution in the space,” Gershwind said on a Q1 earnings call, according to a transcript from Seeking Alpha.

Improving the customer experience

“For example, in ecommerce, recent work is focused on improving the customer experience on our website by enhancing product discovery, and enriching product data. This investment is producing early returns as ecommerce sales grew mid-teens in the first quarter.”

(Hill will give a keynote address on MSC’s B2B digital strategy at EnvisionB2B 2023 on June 22 in Chicago.)

Gershwind also noted that MSC’s internet-based “vending machine revenue grew in the mid-teens and now represent over 15% of total company sales.”

MSC laid the groundwork in Q1 for more growth through vending machines and other digital technologies.

“Our capital expenditures were $26 million in the first quarter and included elevated vending installations, new warehouse automation, and continued investments in digital,” said Kristen Actis-Grande, chief technology officer. She added that MSC expects to spend “in the range of $70 million to $80 million” overall on capital expenditures in its 2003 fiscal year.

MSC, whose corporate parent is MSC Industrial Direct Inc., defines ecommerce as all sales transacted through its ecommerce platforms, including MSCDirect.com; vending machines, vendor-managed inventory systems, electronic data interchange, XML-based ordering systems, and other hosted systems and electronic portals.

For its first fiscal quarter ended Dec. 3, MSC reported:

• Ecommerce sales increased 15.6% to $592.9 million, accounting for 61.9% of total net sales;
• Total net sales increased 12.9% to $957.7 million;
• Gross profit increased 12.8% to $397.8 million for a profit margin of 41.5%;
• Net income increased 22.6% to $81.2 million.

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There is ample opportunity in the $1.6 trillion U.S. B2B ecommerce market for B2B buyers and sellers of all sizes. But as business buyers and sells look to ramp up their ecommerce strategies, technology ecosystems and programs to serve increasingly growing numbers of digital-first customers, there are significant challenges as well.

Businesses need answers to their most important ecommerce questions. And that’s where the distinguished Day 2 keynoters at EnvisionB2B 2023 come in. EnvisionB2B is back for the second consecutive year and taking place in Chicago at the Chicago Hilton from June 20-22.

Both of the two keynoters kicking off the morning general sessions on June 21 are among the industry’s most high-profile manufacturing and distribution companies and executives driving their B2B ecommerce agenda forward.

EnvisionB2B 2023 keynote speakers

Leading off the keynote sessions on June 21 are Brent Steffen, director of ecommerce at Cat Digital at Caterpillar Inc., and Sandy Mattinson, chief merchandising officer for Zoro, a top B2B ecommerce site of W.W. Grainger Inc. Zoro now generates $1 billion in annual sales.

Brent Steffen, director of e-commerce, Cat Digital

Steffen will take part in a one-on-one fireside chat with Digital Commerce senior vice president of B2B and market research Mark Brohan on June 21 from 9 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. on how and why Caterpillar is making digital commerce transformation a corporate and strategic priority. Steffen will discuss how Caterpillar is accelerating ecommerce adoption to drive growth and deliver improved customer experiences across digital and physical channels by using its domain expertise, insights and analytics, and global distribution network.

Sandy Mattinson, chief merchandising officer, Zoro

From 9:30 a.m. to 10 a.m., EnvisionB2B 2023 attendees will listen in on a fireside chat with Mattinson. Few organizations are as flexible and adept at changing with the digital times as W.W. Grainger Inc., a bellwether ecommerce company and the biggest public distributor of maintenance, repair and organizational (MRO) products. In this fireside chat, Mattinson will discuss how Zoro anticipates dynamic change in digital commerce, executes a flexible and winning ecommerce strategy, and how other organizations can do the same.

In all, EnvisionB2B 2023 will feature more than 50 speakers, each an industry thought leader, on conference tracks and sessions that will feature detailed best practices, “how to” advice and multiple networking opportunities. The sessions will educate and help B2B organizations succeed at launching and expanding their ecommerce program and achieve excellence in digital commerce execution and transformation.

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Dan Renda, head of global ecommerce, Siemens Healthineers

The increasing global demand for such products, he adds, coincides with the growth in the manufacturer’s ecommerce transactions. To maintain that kind of growth, Siemens Healthineers is continuing on a path to make it easier for its customers to purchase online — while dealing with challenges, Renda said in a general session presentation at the EnvisionB2B Conference & Exhibition last week.

Overall, elective surgeries declined in number during the COVID-19 pandemic, which hurt the imaging business, he said. Since then, business is back on track, and the company is focusing on its ecommerce strategy.

Siemens Healthineers sells products ranging from COVID tests to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines.  The company’s ecommerce sales primarily cover consumables. They include small laboratory instruments and chemicals used with its complex medical imaging and laboratory diagnostics machines. Additionally, Siemens also sells service contracts, warranties, education, training and certification materials online.

“A lot of our ecommerce revenue comes from smaller products” that support the machinery/testing processes, Renda said. “It’s these smaller products that are a high-volume type of business.”

Keep it simple

But, while enabling customers to buy online, Renda cautions against offering an overabundance of tools.

“It’s really looking to what makes the most sense and ‘why do I want to receive this particular market?’” Renda said.

The majority of Siemens Healthineers’ ecommerce platform revenue is coming from customer purchases transacted through SAP Hybris. It’s an ecommerce platform that business software provider SAP has used as the core of its Commerce Cloud ecommerce software.

Dan Renda, left, sifts with Digital Commerce 360 B2B editor Paul Demery.

“We have a very deep integration with SAP on the back end,” Renda said, referring to enterprise resource planning software. “And we can offer the customer a very tightly integrated process where we are getting the dynamic pricing from the back end to your environment.

“We can show the customer all their orders placed offline or online, and we have the ability to allow the customer to check the status,” he said.

Making ecommerce as ‘frictionless as possible’

Renda noted that, ideally, the less involvement needed from the IT department, the better. Especially when entering new markets with ecommerce, it may deploy a lighter version of its ecommerce software to test the market without integrating with an enterprise resource planning system, then connect to the ERP if the company decides the market is worth developing.

“If that site gains traction, it’s a great way to justify an investment or further level of integration,” he said.

Siemens Healthineers recently rolled out the Spryker marketplace software suite as part of its ecommerce offerings. The goal is to make the ecommerce experience as frictionless as possible, Renda said.

In addition, Siemens Healthineers wants to make it easier for its biggest customers to place online orders.

Large customers “don’t want to have to log onto our web shop,” Renda said. “One of the things we’ve done is give the customer the ability to create an order template. This can be created from prior orders. It’s just a list of commonly ordered products/materials that have been taken by this particular user.”

Saving over 60,000 hours of manual tasks

Also, Renda said customers can maintain standing orders using scheduling and payment options.

“So, they might say, every 30 days, just send me these quantities,” Renda said. “And they know it’ll show up on their doorstep.”

Online order flow efficiencies result in savings, Renda said.

“We can document, a conservative estimate, that globally we’ve saved over 60,000 hours of manual effort,” Renda said. “That’s one way to look at return on investment.”

Without rekeying orders, Renda says, Siemens Healthineers can have a better degree of care quality.

“The customer can see the status that comes from contract delivery orders,” Renda said. “There’s an element of customer satisfaction that’s affordable.”

Hospitals are a main customer segment for the company, and many of their purchases are not suited for online transactions, Renda said. Moreover, a customer’s purchase transaction for large, high-ticket products like MRI machines is typically conducted with the help of consultants and engineers alongside Healthineers’ sales team.

“But we want to move into a world where there is more of that buyer journey” online, he said.

One goal for now is to help customers plan equipment configurations online.

“We want to do a better job on our part to keep track of where our customers are — wherever they are — and really have a more cohesive online life,” he said.

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In the past two years, Univar Solutions launched three ecommerce sites and went on to introduce new online tools to improve how it connects digitally with customers. The company stocks more than17,000 chemicals and ingredients. “It’s all about making it easier to do business,” says Steve Martinez, vice president of digital solutions.

Gains from digital transformation

In an industry that has made inroads into ecommerce in recent years, Univar Solutions is taking steps to stand out with digital technology and services. The effort is paying off, the company says.  As the company reported through its first quarter 2022 earnings, the number of customers purchasing online has increased by 101% while online orders have risen by 106% year over year. More than 47% of the company’s U.S. customers are registered on its ecommerce channels.

Univar Solutions’ efforts show that an effective digital strategy can help an established industrial supplies company build new rewarding connections with customers and grow sales – and especially so amid the COVID-19 market disruption, Martinez says. “We had to exercise our digital muscle more with COVID, but fortunately we had our digital technology integration far enough along.”

The company’s digital technology and strategy, he notes, made it smoother and faster for the distributor to shift to chemicals and materials that buyers need for COVID-related safety and cleaning products, including hand sanitizer, and rubbing alcohol. “Our online tools played a critical role to help us fight the pandemic, and we wanted to get out the gate first with products spiking in demand,” Martinez says.

The key role of Univar Solutions’ digital commerce strategy was underscored earlier this year by top management as part of the company’s overall digital transformation. “During 2021, we put this transformation on display as our digital tool investments helped us attract new customers, retain our existing customers, and streamline our processes,” David Jukes, president and CEO, says in a note to shareholders in Univar Solutions’ latest annual report. “We’ve transformed the business, putting the customer at the center of all we do while working to take full advantage of every opportunity to drive growth.”

That customer-first strategy, Martinez says, is the key to Univar Solutions’ growth and one that differs with long-held strategies in B2B commerce, he says. Many B2B businesses, he notes, withhold detailed product and pricing information, following a policy of “Before you see anything, I need to know you’re my customer.”

That approach to customer service is flawed, he says.

The more effective  B2B strategy, he notes, is similar to retail commerce, where sellers “show their value first before engaging with a customer.”

“The new way is to say to the customer: ‘Let me understand what you want, and I’ll get it to you,’” Martinez says.

Univar Solutions is pushing that business strategy with a stable of ecommerce and thought leadership sites as well as a digital supply chain that offers customers various ways to access product information, make purchases, engage with sales reps, check order status, review invoices and make payments.

Removing the bouncer from the sales door

The core strategic move is increasing and improving digital visibility and access to more online products, pricing and service. While many B2B ecommerce sites require new customers to establish an account and log into it to view pricing and full product catalogs, Univar Solutions takes the opposite approach in some of its online venues: “Remove the bouncer from the door and do not make customers sign in,” Martinez says.

The chemicals distributor also limits the requirements to process a request-for-quote to get to product pricing. By compiling and analyzing data on what customers purchase and what they don’t, Univar Solutions learns the true demand curve in its market and gains the ability to set and modify pricing for maximum sales and margins, Martinez says.

In addition, by using digital connections with suppliers throughout the supply chain, the company gains real-time information to share with customers on order status and shipments.

Univar Solutions’ digital commerce footprint now includes:

• ChemCentral.com, a no-frills self-service commerce feature that lets customers view pricing without logging in. ChemCentral caters to small and mid-sized businesses that may need to place occasional or one-time orders.
• BeautyIngredients.com, a specialty site that displays pricing openly and caters to businesses and entrepreneurs involved in developing and selling personal care and “beauty” products. The site also provides Univar Solutions with additional market demand information on which chemicals companies are using in new products.
• UnivarSolutions.com, a comprehensive ecommerce site where customers can purchase from more than 17,000-products and also access regulatory documents, and view invoicing and order status. Customers can view all web pricing or request a quote after logging in. New customers without an account can also view some pricing, or request a quote by inserting their contact information.
• ChemPoint.com, a portal designed to foster connections between suppliers and buyers. For suppliers, ChemPoint is designed to help them find, engage and retain customers on a large scale through demand-creation programs. For buyers, ChemPoint organizes content on available specialty products and related technical and safety information to assist in formulating end products.
• Thought Leadership sites. These are market-driven sites offering technical content, trend information and product details at scale available throughout the company’s global network, including Innovation & Solutions Centers, Food Ingredients, Homecare & Industrial Cleaning Ingredients.

Going forward, Univar Solutions will continue building digital commerce tools and gathering and analyzing digital data to improve how it services customers, Martinez says. “It’s an ongoing digital evolution.”

EnvisionB2B and special report

Steve Martinez will speak at EnvisionB2B on the panel, “Products, Data, Pricing – Getting It All Right,” Friday, June 10, 2:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

This article is included in a special report, “B2B Customer Conversion Secrets,” published by Digital Commerce 360.

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