As we transition into the 2020s, it’s a good time to look back on how business has changed in the last decade. One of the biggest changes has been the rise of B2B eCommerce. B2B customers now expect the convenience of online self-service options… but have you kept pace with this change?

These days, many manufacturing businesses sell to both resellers and consumers, which complicates their supply chain relationships. Savvy manufacturers understand that they must adopt new strategies to handle these varying relationships, but only some manufacturers succeed with the strategies they choose. Here’s why.  

Growth is the #1 sign that your business is successful, but too much growth, too fast, can be your #1 business killer. Prepare your company for lasting success when you choose a B2B eCommerce system that fully supports all your growth, all the time.

When you’re overdue for your B2B eCommerce platform, you’ll know it. Potential customers will express surprise at your lack of online ordering and account management options, and even established, long-term customers will gradually cut down on their order frequency… until, one day, they stop ordering entirely.

We are pleased to introduce the first episode of our new podcast: CIMcast - The B2B Software Podcast. This episode covers what we call "the B2B dilemma", which addresses the fractured state of software solutions available to SMB companies that work in the B2B space.

CIMcloud CEO, Brian Seidel, joined the Enterprise Software Podcast as their guest for this week's episode titled "Citizenship and CIMcloud". The Enterprise Software Podcast is hosted by our good friends Darcy Boerio (DAB Partners), Bob McAdam (Dynamic Communities) and Todd McDaniel (Dynavistics), giving their audience an opportunity to hear valuable insights and information on various Enterprise Software topics.

We've all been in a situation where you are placing an order and think to yourself, "I'm not sure they're going to get my order right". Regardless of industry, customers now have more leverage than ever due to the amount of competition in the market and therefore won't settle for subpar experiences. When you mess up a customer order, or even leave them thinking you did, their perception of your organization will be changed and you may have lost a customer for life. 

Businesses, and particularly ones that sell B2B, need to do everything in their power to proactively remove any doubt customers may have about their ability to deliver on expectations. An easy way to accomplish this is to offer self-service alternatives (like a Customer Portal) that empower customers to order whenever they want and places responsibility for the actual input of the order in their hands, not your employees. Giving customers the ability to order online can be a massive differentiator for your organization and goes a long way towards protecting your business from the pitfalls of unavoidable human errors. 

Maintaining long-term relationships with customers is a challenge for B2B companies that has and always will exist, regardless of who your customers are or what you sell to them. 

Technological advances have allowed the emergence of solutions like Customer Relationship Management (CRM), designed to provide employees with a tool to more efficiently keep and grow these relationships. While traditional CRM software has removed the need to track customer information on handwritten notes, it still falls short of the goal to "maintain and perfect customer relationships" for one key reason: It lacks integration with customer-specific data sources, like your ERP accounting system and other business applications. 

Empowering customers and employees with tools can be an invaluable asset for your business, enabling more effective and efficient customer interactions. An E-Commerce presence and CRM solutions are just two examples of the vast amount of “tools” designed to improve the way customers and companies interact, but what is really needed for these tools to be valuable: DATA.

Whether it’s the data used to power the application, or the resulting information from usage, these tools are only as valuable as the information displayed to and resulting from users. So whether it’s due to a poor integration or re-keying errors, if the applications used by your employees and customers display inaccurate data, what are they really accomplishing?