For many manufacturers, ecommerce is far from reality but is proving unavoidable. In addition, distributors are demanding online sales channels, with the possibility of implementing their own ecommerce.
From our experience in developing B2B ecommerce platforms We firmly believe a manufacturer can and should provide their distributors the possibility to sell online, integrated with the brand's platform, mainly for the following reasons:
- The brand can better guide the whole sales process (until the point of selling to the final consumers).
- Marketing, promotions, catalog, customer service, business intellgence, analytics and monitoring can be completely centralized.
- Distributors can benefit from the manufacturer's brand image, yet be able to define their own prices, inventory, and shipping charges.
The result is a fantastic user experience within an integrated brand's ecosystem.
Our solution
Orienteed has created a solution specifically for manufacturers wanting to provide enhanced value to their distribution chain. In a nutshell, our solution provides the following main features:
- It is based on a leading B2B ecommerce platform: HCL Commerce.
- Elastic and scalable infrastructure deployed on AWS.
- Managed host model (the data belongs to you!).
- Headless and mobile first User Interface.
- The territory of interest (it can be a region, a country or even a continent) split into different geographical areas (each one assigned to a specific distributor).
- The catalog, promotions, marketing campaigns are totally centralized and controlled by the brand.
- The business intelligence, monitoring and reporting is also centralized, developed with cutting edge technologies such as: ElasticSearch, LogStash and Kibana.
- Distributors provide prices, inventory and shipping charges, and receive the orders as soon as they are placed in their specific area of interest.
- Native integration with RedSys.
- Optimized two-step checkout.
- Possibility to buy out of stock products.
- Integration with multiples ERPs.
- Use of thousands of different price lists (for each distributor) and multiple buyers profiles.
- Conversion of sales units (pack, pallet, etc.).
- SEO optimization (canonicals, slugs, contents, keywords).
- Dynamic product pages based on the distributor's needs.
- Integration with CDN and static content repositories.
All the typical features of a B2B (saved and recurring orders, quotes/requisition lists, self-service, etc.) are presented as a B2C user Experience, in a platform made for manufacturers.
B2B business case: Pladur, an internal drywall manufacturer
In one of our ecommerce projects, our team has developed a solution that put Pladur, the leading manufacturer of drywall solutions in Spain, its distributors, and the final customer on the same platform.
Thanks to this B2B2C model, both the final customer and the professional installation service can purchase any product from Pladur's catalog.
If you would like to learn more about our recent B2B ecommerce projects, please don't hesitate to contact us: info@orienteed.com.
CEO at Orienteed.
