Dive Brief:
- Roughly 75% of B2B companies report that their customers like buying online, according to the study "Digital Transformation and B2B E-Commerce Report 2017-2018," B2B E-commerce World reported Wednesday.
- Customers prefer online options due to ease of purchasing, 72% of respondents reported, while not having to wait for a sales rep was the preference of 52%. Insight into available inventory and delivery times was the choice of 42%.
- Although 63% of respondents already have a digital transformation strategy, 73% say e-commerce is vital to digital transformation within their company, with 45% citing the ability to directly integrate an e-commerce site with back-end enterprise resource planning software as a highly positive feature. A further 44% say data integration plays a key role in providing a better customer experience.
Dive Insight:
One of the biggest effects of e-commerce is digitization, and it looks like B2B companies are getting the hang of it. A key takeaway from this story is that B2B companies are increasingly aware of what their customers want, and they're digitizing operations in order to meet those expectations.
What's interesting is that retail companies are still struggling to embrace omnichannel methods. According to a Kibo study, some retailers still have pricing gaps between their e-commerce sites and brick-and-mortar stores, while a third of retailers do not have the mobile tech to view and manage inventory online. B2B companies, like manufacturers and suppliers, seem to understand the importance of company-wide digitization and can identify customer needs and wants, retailers — which are usually the intermediary between several B2B companies and the consumer — still haven't implemented the omnichannel shopping methods that consumers expect.
Implementation can sometimes take awhile, and retailers are definitely aware of the need to streamline supply chains in order to meet the demands of e-commerce, but they'll hurt B2B companies' supply chains in the long run if they can't get up to speed.
