In the e-commerce world, a microsite, multisite, or extended site has many interpretations or definitions. Collectively, we will refer to them as an “e-site,” which in general describes the idea of having multiple websites that address different business needs in an...
Insights
We Can Make B2B Commerce Simple – Positioning Your Business for Success
BlueSky Commerce Blog
Featured
Related Posts
7 Effective Ways to Increase Your Average Order Value (AOV) in B2B and B2B2C E-commerce
In the competitive B2B and B2B2C e-commerce landscape, businesses are grappling with slower sales growth and the need to find new revenue streams. Leaders responsible for e-commerce strategies must focus on innovative approaches to recover lost revenue and drive...
Have Questions?
Get In Touch
BlueSky Commerce
- BlueSky Commerce Partners with commercetools
- KLaunch and BlueSky Commerce Announce FoodBridge, An AI-Powered E-Commerce Solution Created for the Financial Stability of Food Banks
- Catch up with BlueSky Commerce at Shoptalk 2023!
- Industry E-Commerce Sales Veterans Leading the Way at BlueSky
- BlueSky Sponsors Brooke’s Place 2022 Hope Fore Tomorrow Golf Outing June 6, 2022
- BlueSky Commerce announces strategic partnership with Fluent Commerce
- 7 Ways to Modernize Your E-Commerce Site Design
- Creating a Digitally Native Culture: A 360 Approach to Digital Transformation
- How to Take Your B2B Brand Direct-to-Consumer
- BlueSky Commerce Sponsors Brooke’s Place Hope Fore Tomorrow Golf Outing
Follow Us
We Can Make B2B Commerce Simple – Positioning Your Business for Success
B2B eCommerce websites are often thought of as dull and boring with outdated UX and uninteresting business challenges when compared to modern B2C sites.
However, in recent years this has changed and B2B customers now expect a similar if not better experience than what they get from B2C sites. B2B marketers and merchandisers are equally challenged with how to create these meaningful experiences while simultaneously growing the business in a more cost-efficient manner. In addition, given the pace of change, B2B teams can no longer wait on development or IT teams for assistance.
IBM WebSphere Commerce provides businesses with robust pre-built B2B functionality and marketing and merchandising tools to help address these evolving customer and market challenges.
Let’s explore a few of the ways the platform can handle customer-specific product catalogs, and pricing.
Customer contracts
Providing your customer with their approved product catalog is perhaps the most common and classic functionality requests required of B2B websites. Enterprise-class solutions such as WebSphere Commerce leverage merchandising and marketing tools to streamline the presentation of customer-specific product assortments and pricing. Taxonomy and attribution filters quickly define product assortments subsequently assigned to a customer’s contract, controlling what they are able to view and purchase. All accomplished without IT, allowing for faster time to market and value.
Additionally, by leveraging Websphere Commerce’s highly customizable search component (based on open source Solr) a customer’s entitled product catalog can be created based only on those products priced in their contract. For customers requiring a more custom catalog structure, dedicated sales catalogs can be created to be dynamically associated with one or more customers.
Pricing
Managing pricing is typically a very time-consuming process, especially if you have multiple pricing levels and customer segments. Pricing unique to a customer can be achieved through the built-in contract pricing feature. However, if you rely on backend systems like SAP, Oracle, or JD Edwards as the system of record, it’s possible to map 1:1 to the pricing contract in Websphere Commerce. For more complex contracts, these integrations can rely on other common ground such as price groups in SAP, which are analogous to price lists in WebSphere Commerce. A single price group can be associated with one or more customers, – These price lists can also be customized to be active based on schedules, allowing for improved price management.
Extended sites
Taking it to the next level, using the Extended Sites feature of WebSphere Commerce, multiple micro sites can be created using customer-specific catalogs and styling which can be dedicated to larger customer accounts. The customer-specific site need not necessarily only display the customer specific catalog, other catalogs like the common public catalog can also be linked and displayed ensuring that the customer still has access to the wider assortment of products. Customer-specific product titles can be used which are searchable and have search relevancy.
The ability to personalize your B2B customer’s experience is no longer a nice to have, it’s a must. Just as important is being able to provide your marketing & merchandising team with the necessary tools to customize the site without intervention from IT for assistance. IBM WebSphere Commerce provides these capabilities.
Contact a BlueSky business consultant today to learn how we can take what we’ve learned from our work with other clients and help your business.
Start the Conversation
BlueSky’s unmatched commerce expertise allows us to help our clients understand how to utilize omnichannel and business solutions to reach, attract, engage, and grow customers.
Related Posts
Leveraging Voice of Customer Research in B2B E-commerce: A Strategic Imperative
Understanding stakeholder needs is crucial in the rapidly evolving landscape of B2B commerce. Conducting Voice of Customer (VoC) research has emerged as a strategic imperative for businesses aiming to transition to B2B e-commerce successfully. This blog will outline...
Navigating the Challenges of B2B E-commerce: Overcoming Sales Team Acceptance
The digital revolution has reshaped the way businesses operate, and B2B e-commerce has emerged as a critical avenue for growth. However, transitioning to B2B e-commerce is challenging, and one significant hurdle is gaining acceptance from your sales team. This...
The Great Debate: Buy vs. Build
Trends in the Software and Technology space come and go, but one consistent question we always get from prospects and clients centers around buying versus building. The challenge in answering this loaded question is that not every scenario is the same. ...