B2B Commerce

B2B Commerce and the Drive to Re-Platform

Whether you sell your goods directly to other businesses, or through distributors and other partners, you're likely thinking more seriously about how you sell online. A number of trends make it clear that you're on the right track.

Pressure to Improve Operational Efficiency

The need to operate more efficiently is not new, but it is today�s imperative. If you accept many orders through your call center via phone or fax, you likely need to reduce both error rates and the overall expense of taking an order. Even if you have an online order portal, you're probably seeking to introduce efficiencies into your sales and support organizations. After all, delivering order and product information tailored to each contract and trading relationship can be labor-intensive. The right online solution will help you realize cost efficiencies and improve order capture and processing.

The Need to Strengthen Relationships with End Customers

Your channel partner relationships are a critical link to your end customers and an important part of your operation. Increasingly, however, you need to establish direct relationships with your customers to gather and understand information about them and to establish brand preference. Leveraging the online channel is a powerful way to achieve that goal.

The complex B2B commerce process and supply chain can include both B2B, B2B2B, and B2B2C interactions and relationships.

Challenges in Delivering the Right Information to All Site Visitors

If you serve a complex supply chain, you probably maintain multiple sites, each featuring a different catalog and content. Managing this diversity of information - and delivering it to the appropriate person - is no small task. Yet whether you need to furnish pricing information to a sales rep in a showroom, provide parts information to a repair technician, or deliver product information to prospects and distributors, each person expects you to serve the right information at the right time.

New Demands to Match the B2C Experience

Even though you may sell directly to other businesses, your partners and end customers are accustomed to stellar online B2C experiences in their own lives as consumers. As a result, they are demanding more from you - even when it comes to accessing information and placing orders. This is especially true if your competitors are deploying sophisticated partner portals and Web order management and administration solutions. Clearly you need to satisfy expectations and deliver an online experience that sets you apart.

Evolve from Basic Ordering Portals to Best-in-Class B2B Commerce

To date you've likely relied upon simple ordering portals with limited functionality. While this may have served you sufficiently to date, your partners, customers, and competitors are raising the bar when it comes to the online experience.

Now you need to invest in a B2B e-commerce solution that enables you to:

Personalize the site to provide the right information to each visitor - whether that is a distributor, the purchasing agent at a large customer, a consumer looking for information, or someone else
Provide an ordering portal capable of supporting business-specific information and restrictions based on contract types
Support complex order workflow and self-service
Enable B2B, B2C and B2B2C business models online
Integrate with various systems used to support cross-channel commerce

Extensions to ERP and other systems, and simple B2B e-commerce solutions are no longer adequate. You need to re-platform with a solution that supports today's B2B commerce expectations. By choosing a best-in-class commerce platform as the foundation for your online capabilities, you can improve operational efficiency, strengthen relationships with customers and partners, and tap into advanced services that enhance your existing operations.

ATG Provides an Advanced Commerce Platform and Services

ATG offers the most advanced commerce platform and services designed to optimize the commerce experience. The ATG B2B Commerce module enables you to drive cross-channel B2B sales and marketing from a single platform - even for multiple brands, and across multiple geographies. You can apply the same benefits offered by the leading consumer commerce solution to automate order entry and processing, handle large catalogs, and support a high volume of transactions online.

To offer you the utmost flexibility, ATG Commerce is available as licensed software or a fully hosted on-demand solution. Not ready to make the leap to a completely new commerce platform? You can still take advantage of our ATG Optimization solutions. For example, with little more effort than adding a line of code to your site, you can deliver more relevant product information to your B2B customers, and close more sales with proactive live help.

Please visit our Products and Services page for more information on our market-leading commerce platform and services.