Why B2B eCommerce Isn’t All About The B2C Experience

The success of a B2B Commerce-as-a-Service provider is often judged on how well a wholesaler’s or manufacturer’s online sales efforts emulate those of a traditional B2C experience. While it’s true that B2B buyers want an online procurement experience similar to a personal experience seen with, for example, Amazon, there are key elements to B2B online selling that are not seen in the B2C CaaS industry but are imperative to the success of e-sales efforts.

Forrester Research has just released a new report on the highest-performing B2B commerce service providers on the market today. “The Forrester Wave: B2B Commerce Suites, Q2 2015” report pinpoints several B2B CaaS providers that have gained traction in the market; researchers assessed which of these offers the strongest services and can be considered a leader in the industry.

While Forrester’s choice of lead B2B CaaS providers is newsworthy, the method of Forrester’s study is perhaps more valuable to the B2B sector. The criterion by which these commerce vendors were judged provides some of the most contemporary analysis available today as to what B2B sellers and buyers need in their online sales experiences to succeed.

Chosen Leaders

To conduct its assessment, Forrester highlighted eight B2B commerce service providers that have become some of the most important to vendors today: Oracle, Insite Software, NetSuite, IBM, eBay Enterprise, hybris (an SAP company), Intershop and CloudCraze.

These eight companies were not only scrutinized againt each other but compared against today’s leading B2C commerce service providers like Amazon and Walmart. Scorers examined the firms’ current offering, strategy and market presence. Following this analysis, Forrester pinpointed hybris (SAP) as the strongest leader in B2B eCommerce soluions, followed by IBM and Oracle.

It is true that B2B sellers and buyers want to emulate the B2C giants when launching an online sales strategy. Forrester found that B2B CaaS providers must emulate their B2C counterparts to meet the high expectations held by corporate buyers. “B2B buyers continue to expect an ‘Amazon-like’ experience despite the space’s increasing complexity, and B2B sellers face both internal and external channel conflict on the route to meet these high customer expectations.”

While nearly half of B2B sellers say they offer a better online experience than their rivals, that same percentage (48 percent) consider their online sales offerings worse than Amazon’s.

What Makes B2B Unique

While the demand for an Amazon-like online procurement experience makes it clear why Forrester would assess B2B eCommerce service leaders by their ability to meet this demand, a major component of the research was also assessing how these vendors meet the demands unique to B2B sales.

“B2B commerce platforms must have a best-in-class foundation of B2C features such as robust marketing, merchandising and experience management,” Forrester researchers concluded, “but differ in their emphasis on solution architecture, platform agility and, increasingly, product information management capabilities.”

Vendors were judged based on their ability to meet demands like complex pricing lists and fulfillment of bulk orders, for example.

A key takeaway from the report is the conclusion that B2B players must also handle the challenges of B2B sales not experienced by the B2C community — and those challenges are growing in complexity. A major contributor to this trend is the emerging efforts by suppliers and manufacturers to launch an omnichannel experience for their corporate buyers. As B2B online retail is expanding both geographically and technologically, Forrester found that the CaaS providers most successful today are the ones that are agile and robust enough to support global, omnichannel sales efforts, plus the ability to provide a B2C consumer experience for B2B buyers.

A Space To Grow

By pinpointing the unique demands of a digital B2B sales strategy, Forrester simultaneously zeroed in on the ongoing challenges faced by B2B players today similarly not seen in the B2C space.

For example, the report found that B2B sellers and manufacturers often struggle to implement digital strategy due to a lack of leadership in the space within their firm. This lack of leadership means B2B firms are locked in to traditional, outdated sales methods and mindsets.

A major cause of this friction stems from the multifaceted roles that today’s B2B sellers must play. “For example,” the report said, “many distributors are now becoming de facto manufacturers by selling via private label, and many manufacturers are becoming de facto distributors by selling direct to customers. This reordering of the players in many industries has caused channel complexity regarding pricing and assortments that many B2B companies are ill prepared to handle.”

The state of B2B eCommerce remains a small one. According to Forrester, while the market is set to reach a $1.1 trillion valuation by 2020 in the U.S. alone — representing a 6.2 percent year-over-year growth rate — the B2B eCommerce market is still only expected to account for about 12 percent of all B2B sales at the end of the decade.

Still, researchers predict consistent and strong growth in the market, which must be fueled by commerce service providers that can meet B2B demands. Researchers found that in just two years, the number of B2B buyers that are likely to complete at least half of their procurement practices online is set to double.

Forrester researchers concluded that commerce vendors must hustle if they are to nab a piece of this market. “B2B companies must therefore move quickly to build a world-class digital buying experience,” the report declared.

Forrester reported that spending on commerce platform technology will see an annual compound growth rate of 10 percent over the next four years in the U.S., reaching a $2.1 billion valuation by 2019. But for CaaS providers, securing these profits will only be realized if vendors can provide both B2C and B2B characteristics for wholesalers and suppliers.