We are proud to present our newest podcast e-commerce quickFIX 🔥 This format will allow us to delve deeper into key topics related to cross-border, e-commerce and entrepreneurship 😎

quickFIX is a talk-show podcast in which we will have one or more expert guests per episode 🤯 And today, we had the pleasure of talking with 🌟Gerrit Enthoven🌟EVP Marketing, Sales & Channel at Intershop Communications, the world's leading B2B e-commerce solution, to learn and discover the main trends that will surely mark the evolution of B2B e-commerce during 2024! ⏰

With him, we discuss the challenges and opportunities behind the use of AI, how sustainability remains vital, and what has led to the rise of cooperative commerce solutions and marketplace technology, among many other key topics to keep your B2B business ahead of the curve! Let’s begin! 🚀

Do you have any questions regarding B2B e-commerce? Leave your doubts and requests in our comment section, and we hope to see you all in the next quickFIX!

The post quickFIX: Intershop B2B e-commerce trends for 2024! appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

By Intershop - The 2022 edition of the annual B2B E-commerce Markt Monitor is out: 6,502 corporate buyers across the Netherlands were asked about their online ordering experiences and expectations. The report provides valuable insight into the state of e-commerce in the Dutch business market, including the associated opportunities for growth.

🔥Find out more about B2B E-commerce Markt Monitor 2022, and also on how Intershop can help you build the perfect B2B e-commerce solution for your brand here!🔥

In recent years, the number of online corporate orders has increased substantially. If you thought this was a temporary, COVID-related upswing—think again! No less than 90% of Dutch corporate buyers are now ordering online. And nearly half of them expect to place over 90% of their orders online in five years’ time. This report clearly shows that B2B e-commerce is a growth market. However, it also reveals that B2B e-commerce currently doesn’t always meet the expectations and wishes of corporate buyers. That means there are plenty of growth opportunities for companies using e-commerce to serve the B2B market.

B2B E-commerce Markt Monitor 2022

What are the top 3 takeaways from your B2B e-commerce strategy?

1. Invest in time savings and ease of order to increase efficiency for your corporate customers.

Saving time turned out to be the main reason for ordering online for 35% of the Dutch B2B buyers surveyed, while delivery convenience was cited by 28% of respondents. These drivers differentiate B2B buyers from consumers, who are mainly interested in broad product ranges and extensive search and comparison options. If you want to serve the B2B market effectively, you’d be wise to set up your online shop in such a way that navigating, searching, and orders are all quick and easy.

2. You achieve more with compelling customer experiences – also in B2B.

According to the respondents, the biggest disadvantage of online ordering for the business market is that products cannot be physically handled or viewed (27 %). This is an area where B2B online shops and order portals can definitely learn something from successful B2C e-commerce players, whose product pages are much more focused on the customer experience. Luckily, there are also plenty of opportunities in this regard for B2B companies, starting with displaying clear product photos, including from different angles, and with the ability to zoom in. In addition, you should provide accurate product descriptions and specifications, related and complementary products as well as instructional videos, reviews, and manuals. By describing and displaying your products as comprehensively as possible, you can overcome the reservations of experienced corporate buyers.

3. Personalization is your key to growth in B2B e-commerce.

Just 21% of the Dutch B2B buyers accounted for a massive 78% of all online corporate orders last year. These super buyers, called “heavy shoppers” in the report, ordered 127 times a year on average. So for B2B e-commerce, this is a very valuable group of buyers. Especially when you consider that these heavy shoppers often work for mid-sized and large companies and they buy mainly from B2B shops and portals and less often from online shops that also serve the consumer market.

Optimizing the user experience for these heavy shoppers with a personalized customer journey across all order channels will boost conversion, the share of wallet, and customer loyalty. Options here include displaying a customer-specific range of products, personalized search results and recommendations, and having a personalized checkout where an order (or repeat order) can be placed with minimal effort.

A must-read for anyone using e-commerce to serve the B2B market

Naturally, the B2B E-commerce Markt Monitor 2022 contains many more interesting facts, figures, insights, and opportunities. For example, what do corporate buyers expect in terms of payment options, sustainability, and logistics? Which products are most often ordered online? And what adjustments can you make to your e-commerce strategy to ensure that you gain ground as a B2B supplier in the years ahead? The report answers these and other questions—supported by solid data. The B2B E-commerce Markt Monitor 2022 is a must-read for every company that serves the B2B market and wants to grow its e-commerce business based on hard facts. Because one thing is clear from the report’s subtitle: In B2B, the shift from offline to online continues unabated.

The B2B E-commerce Markt Monitor 2022 is the result of a collaboration between Intershop and PostNL, De Nieuwe Zaak, Currence, and Thuiswinkel.org.

The post Three growth opportunities for B2B e-commerce! appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

Online shopping has changed shopping behaviour drastically. The rise of e-commerce has challenged both B2B and B2C sellers to constantly adapt themselves to new trends, changing consumer demands and competitive pressure. Today, having an aged legacy commerce system implies a slow in business growth, because the lack of agility and scalability will become more expensive to operate and maintain. It will become harder to integrate evolving IT landscapes. So a state-of-the-art commerce platform is a must to survive in these challenging markets. Picking the right commerce platform for your organisation, however, is a challenge. Omnichannel e-commerce solution provider Intershop highlighted some reasons and risks of replatforming. In practice, there are five 'red flags' indicating that it is time to switch to a new system.

Replatforming Indicators

These indicators can be divided into the following categories:

1. Inadequate functionalities
   Does the shopping experience you offer meet the needs of your customer? You need a solution that can synchronise data in real time between your commerce platform and all channels and devices your customers use.
2. Growth limited by scalability issues
   B2B digital sales channels get bigger and bigger. An outdated system can no longer handle the increase in the number of products, visitors, orders and transactions.
3. Integration problems
   Your e-commerce solution needs data from other systems, such as inventory, payment and CRM systems. Automatic synchronisation is an important condition that an e-commerce platform must meet.
4. Unstable performance
   There are two preconditions you have to meet to offer a good digital user experience: continuous accessibility of the website and short loading times. Be sure the server hardware can handle this – or switch to a cloud-based solution.
5. Cost of ownership
   The total cost of ownership of a new platform can be lower than that of your old system.

Do you want to know more? Download the Intershop whitepaper on replatforming here.

The post 5 Indicators to Replatform in B2B appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

Turkish fashion brand Penti has been a success since the 1950s. The multichannel retailer has become a beloved brand by consumers over the world. Focusing on underwear fashion, Penti has become a market leader in intimates, beach wear, leg wear and home wear. What started with a store at Valikonağı Avenue has developed into a brand with more than 500 stores in five continents and more than 60 million visitors every year. We meet Fehime Garan, Senior E-commerce Manager at Penti.

Socks

Penti’s success started with socks, a basic item everybody uses. These days, the fashion retailer is still Turkey’s leading and Europe’s second largest hosiery manufacturer while it expanded to other product categories as well. That way, the company developed itself to the multi-category intimate retailer it is today. In the last ten years, a lot of these new categories were added. “We have seen some special highlights over the last few years. By innovating on products, we have attracted attention to the category of underwear,” Garan points out. “It is to say that we really added a lot to the creation of the underwear category. We, for example, reintroduced fishnet tights to the market. Today, intimate fashion has become complementary to all categories it serves, including specific style codes, too. It provides us with the possibility to strengthen our market position as market-pioneer by matching production, design and marketing demands with existing and emerging customer demands.”

Online expansion: promoting the brand

One of the demands of the last years, obviously, was the possibility to order online. With an online shop, the (online) business grew and Penti.com instantly adds new features to the platform. The multichannel fashion retailer used a Magento Commerce Community solution before it partnered with MNM, an Intershop business partner. “We wanted to replatform so we would be able to set up multi-level promotion campaigns. They are very important for both our online and offline business. This flexible solution makes it possible to add the new features we want in our shop in a way that offers us the possibility to stay up to date with changing online trends and consumer demands. We were looking for a solution like this as our promotions often are very complex. Having to work with only one e-commerce infrastructure has made things a lot easier.”

Omnichannel strategy

While growing online over the years, the e-commerce team of Penti has been growing as well. Now, a team of ten is working on a daily basis to optimise the platform and generate sales. The ongoing process is to fit the online and offline strategies in the overarching omnichannel strategy of the company. “It was a logical step to match our online and offline experience,” Garan states. “However, realising this is not as easy as it is to do this. Our e-commerce team has to work closely together with our offline team to strengthen our globalised perspective. We aim to provide our customers with a holistic brand language by giving them the same experience at every point of contact. That means approaching consumers the same way when purchasing online as well as offline. It is one of the reasons we are continuingly improving on our online content.”

Penti aims to be a unified brand, no matter the channel of contact. “We call this our 360-perspective. It is the perfect fit for our multichannel strategy and helps consumers define who they are dealing with and what to expect. With our new platform, we can integrate the offline and online world even more. In more than a hundred of our stores, for example, we can offer a click-and-collect purchase option. Our platform triggers a selected store that gets a notification an online purchase is on its way to be picked up by the consumer. It is an extra service for our customers and an extra sales generator for us,” Garan tells.

A personalised experience

Aiming for a unified experience is only one side of the coin. Penti is aiming to make this unified experience as personal as possible too. As a leading brand in intimates and beach wear the company has a lot of product expertise in house. “Our knowledge always puts us up front in the market. It enabled us to raise the bar in leadership,” explains Garan. Penti offers collection structures with more options. Colours and patterns vary each season. “In 2018, we added personalised bras to our assortment. This approach was implemented in our online shop. Consumers can select a basic bra model and design it themselves with desired patterns and strap alternatives. A few years earlier, we already launched a tool that helped millions of women finding the correct bra size and model that suit them. It is named MyBra and has been ground-breaking in the field of online intimate fashion. It is our mission to bring technologies to our consumers, like the Penti MybraTouch, that makes their life healthier, comfortable and elegant. We believe that, with the quality of products we deliver and our market position, we continue to be accessible to all women,” says Garan.

Providing consumers with the most optimised product assortment, based on their preferences, requires a lot of data research and technology. “It is why we connected customer segmentation and personalisation solutions to our current platform. It helps us to select which products to offer to a specific consumer,” tells Garan, immediately providing an example. “Recently, our Ma Vie Privee collection was released. Online exclusive. This product line is appealing more to daring and mysterious women. Based on clicks, historical order data and other information, we profiled our consumers and decided to show them more or less of this new line. We have seen some very positive results.”

Eyes on the horizon

Penti closed 2018 with more than 530 stores in more than 30 countries. It is massively located in Turkey, with 364 stores in 62 cities while its cross-border ambitions become clear with 170 stores and an English online shop abroad. The international operations of the brand are becoming more important. “We aim to open 50 new stores on 5 continents, from Kazakhstan to Canada. Our cross-border operations grew with 82% and aim for market leadership in countries like Kuwait and Lebanon. Furthermore, we will continue our growth in Europe, the Middle East and plan to enter the Greek market.” Says Garan, continuing: “The Romanian market is a prime example of what we aim for. In 2018, we hosted more than 5 million visitors in our stores here. By opening more stores in the near future, we aim to become a market leader here too. Here, our strategy to raise brand awareness of Penti paid off. Our operations are growing and for the coming period, Romania will be our second point of focus, after the Turkish market. Our online activities are growing rapidly in Romania too. By opening a warehouse, we aim to process to all European countries. An ambitious goal for the future but one we really look forward to,” concludes Garan.

Read all interviews in Cross-Border Magazine.

The post How Penti integrated its online and offline strategy in one personal experience appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

• Part 1 focuses on vision, recent developments, and omnichannel experience.
• Part 2 gets you started with your e-commerce strategy, order management, content, customer experience and with choosing the right platform.

The eBooks are filled with practical knowledge, best practices, and customer stories. Get your overview of challenges, strategies, and solutions for B2B digital commerce now. Download part 1 and part 2.

The post Engineering Digital Commerce in B2B and Wholesale appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

According to research conducted by KPMG and Bitkom Research, almost two-thirds of all companies are using a cloud service. It is predicted that this number will increase.

Intershop is a leading supplier of innovative e-commerce solutions for the B2C and B2B commerce market, focussing on omnichannel solutions.

The post Intershop launches Commerce-as-a-Service cloud solution appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

Wholesalers have always pursued a multi-channel strategy. In earlier days, it may have consisted of using a catalog, a brick-and-mortar store and sales representatives. Digitalisation and the Internet resulted in a big shift, with merchants starting to sell online, creating a whole new pattern of expectations. A lot of these e-commerce companies obviously focused on B2C, but what are the benefits for B2B platform-users?

A Forrester Research showed that two-thirds of all B2B customers expect their interaction with a company to be seamless across all channels. For them, it does not matter if they communicate by phone, desktop PC, mobile devices or even an old-fashioned paper catalog. The experience needs to be the same through every channel, providing the same products, information, price, and services. It is not always easy, for every seller, to create an equal experience through multiple channels. However, it does offer some important advantages. The research noted that about one-third of all omnichannel customers spend more, while half of the omnichannel customers are more profitable overall. The obvious downside of failing to implement an omnichannel strategy is even more telling since the internet. When a product is listed in a catalog but not online, it is so much easier to search for it on a competitor’s website.

Wholesalers have pursued a multi-channel strategy for a long time, using brick-and-mortar locations, catalogs, sales representatives, call centers and many more channels to interact with the customer. With the internet and digitalisation of business processes, harmonisation of all channels is even more important in an omnichannel strategy. A strategy that holds coherent, consistent pricing and branding, with customer-specific rather than channel-specific income statements, to deliver a decent customer experience across all areas and channels. To achieve such an omnichannel strategy often requires a change in thinking, in (re)creating perspectives, changing old ways of thinking as areas of ownership are inevitably transformed.

When B2C and B2B customers connect with a company, they provide useful information through various channels. This helps wholesalers to gain a better understanding of the needs and wishes of their customers. Based on these needs, wholesalers can implement solutions that offer a tailored experience across multiple channels. This benefits the consumer, but will help the wholesaler to improve cross- and upselling as well.

Going online has offered wholesalers a bunch of new tools to provide their customers a quick and easy order process, which adds to the customer satisfaction. Faster transactions, larger selections, products at a lower price and comprehensive after-sales services are main reasons for customers to buy online. This goes for B2C consumers as well as the general wholesale-consumer.

There is a danger in these developments; B2B e-commerce in the wholesale industry is becoming increasingly complex. It is particularly important that wholesalers tailor their quotation management and order entry system to the preferences of business customers – among all available channels. As this is executed successfully, a wholesale-consumer can place their order independently. The buyer controls the entire process, at any time and place of their liking. An example: using a digital sales platform, it is possible to assign a unique order-value limit or personal budget to each individual buyer. If an order value is higher than the assigned limit, an approval request is automatically sent to the manager responsible, guaranteeing full transparency for both buyer and seller and reducing the number of additional manual processes. The buyer is, and remains in control.

According to Gerrit Enthoven, Sales Director at Intershop, an integrated B2B e-commerce solution provides important features and information. These aspects will streamline business processes to make the order-entry more comprehensible and productive. Examples of important features are special customer price lists, custom product offerings, master agreements, block pricing, integrated quotation processes, full order histories, a full overview of all available items at all locations and special logistics options. When using these features, it is possible to coordinate all customer interaction across all available channels as well as replicate sales and order management processes as part of the digital platform. This way, e-commerce in B2B sales provides wholesalers with an additional, very useful sales channel.

More Information on digital commerce in wholesale.

The post Digitalisation: a B2B approach appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

What was the motivation to move towards a more digital business model?
“On the one hand, we wanted to sell online because the customers are increasingly getting used to doing everything online. In their private life, they are accustomed to services as offered by Amazon or Zalando, and therefore begin to wonder why in the B2B environment they should still do everything in an old-fashioned way. In addition to that, we wanted to improve our service. We had a strategic analysis performed by a company called Fenego, who made an overview of how to better translate our goals into a digital strategy. We want to sell the farmers what they need, but also offer technological support to help them improve. One example is to help livestock farmers monitor the growth of their animals online. Technological applications like this not only serve the farmer, but also help us to offer the farmer new options to optimise his business, such as advanced nutrition fitting his situation. The classic cross-selling has got a new component: the salesman used to speak to the farmer out on his land to talk about his needs, but it is now also driven by data gathered online. Online data has given us an alternative, additional source of information.”

So, the e-commerce system is also used within the organisation?
“The digitalisation of Schippers’ processes supports both the continuous improvement of the system, and the optimisation of support the company can offer to its customers. Customers can see their invoice history independent of the sales channel of their previous orders. They can easily place repeat orders or make a list of favourite products. They can also start a return procedure wherever they are. Also, the inbound personnel of Schippers can always access this in real time.
The 10 localised websites not only serve the customers buying online, but also support the inbound sales agents when assisting buyers over the phone or to make orders. As the inbound agents make such heavy use of the e-commerce systems, their feedback is of great value when improving the processes.”

Do you offer localised content?
“Yes, we have all our foreign websites in the appropriate languages, and I can tell you that translation is an undervalued challenge. We use translation agencies, and then have all content double checked by our local people. We are lucky to maintain good relationships with the team and clients in all countries, so we get enough feedback to find problems in the texts and to improve. Besides translations, the content is localised as well as the payment methods.”

How did you manage the transition to a functional, international e-commerce system?
“We have a PIM system (Product Information Management), where we manage our collections, which we share with the webshops. In the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium we have the same collection, which can be compared with a category structure. Products may differ, but the structure remains the same. In Canada, for instance, we have a smaller assortment, so we had to adapt the category structure. Our PIM shares product data and collections with touchpoints through websites, apps and catalogues. From the PIM, we have a special application to share information with the website and we also use it to make our catalogues.”

Catalogues? Do they still exist?
“Sure! They are an important marketing and information feature because people can easily start exploring with catalogues. In addition, with a web shop, you can’t make it clear that your company has a wide range of choices, whereas the thick catalogue always creates that idea. Another positive is that clients start looking online when they are already in an order process, whereas the catalogue is looked at during lunch or coffee, just to have a little browse. This has an inspirational value.”

With which platform do you realise international online sales?
“We use Intershop. It is an internationally powerful B2B platform that makes it easy to manage different situations in different countries, e.g. when it comes to pricing, VAT or shipping costs. We thought the risk of taking an open source platform was too big for us. Intershop makes each international step faster and easier, and we can open in new countries without any problems. We integrate our catalogue, Syncforce and all client data and prices (SAP) with the Intershop platform.”

How do you manage international differences?
“In each country, there is a marketing expert who also advises on the local assortment. The assortment differs per country, and the registration for products might also be different. On top of that, we see that the acceptance of internet as a B2B purchase channel varies from country to country. In Germany, internet usage is sometimes very low, so we suggest to our farmers to try ordering online, but we never push them to change their habits. For us, there is no difference in which channel they use.”

In which way do you use online marketing as a tool?
“We carefully weigh with which kind of customer we are interacting with. Smaller clients are often sensitive to promotions, special offers, that we can put online. They constantly weigh us against the competition. Larger companies have a different relationship with us: we talk about solving problems and we build a different kind of trust and long-term collaboration. The website becomes an ordering tool. We know that the farmers need time for their work, so we don’t want to steal it. We make appointments for real discussions about optimising operations, and shopping can easily be done via our online services, even after working hours if the client wishes. One of the most important questions was how can we better facilitate our customers by offering a 24/7 self-service portal. In order to accomplish the goal of showing the customer as much of the information possible relevant for the customer individually, we needed to make information from the SAP ERP system available in a ‘My Account’ section on the webshop. This was realised through a synaptic integration between Intershop and the SAP-system used by Schippers. We also make increasing use of social media; Facebook is regularly used by farmers and we have already accumulated 10 000 likes in about 10 months. We also get questions there from all over the world, which has already clearly increased.

Is it difficult to make customers trust online markets after years of ordering from a catalogue?
“The most important factor here is reassurance. If you send a good order confirmation, you already win a lot of trust.”

How do you deal with marketplaces like Amazon or Alibaba, which may compete with you on certain levels?
“They are active in certain overlapping sectors, yes. We don’t use marketplaces like Amazon and Alibaba for our sales. For the future, I could imagine it would be interesting to grant other, third-party suppliers access to our marketplace and client base. But we would then keep everything under our name and brand identity. However, we would not like to engage in drop-shipping models, because it distracts our clients from their work if they have to leave the stable for multiple deliveries. In our checkout process, you can always bundle your products to a single delivery. But if we can arrange it in a way that suits us, developing towards a marketplace model is surely an option.”

And other continents, such as China for instance?
“There are cultures where our products simply meet a much lesser demand. In China, livestock farming is not at a level that structural hygiene and an anti-antibiotics policy as advocated by us, are something people are looking out for. But who knows what the future brings. Martien Schippers always said the Netherlands is- as far as the farming industry is concerned- a good indicator of what will happen elsewhere in the future.”

The post “I could imagine opening up for third-party sellers” appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

Our partner Intershop has been cited as a Strong Performer in B2C & B2B commerce suites by renowned industry analyst firm Forrester Research, Inc. The report, “The Forrester Wave™: B2C Commerce Suites, Q1 2017” ranks Intershop in its top three B2C vendors based on its current offering score and among the top in the B2C solution architecture category. 

Decision makers looking for a commerce platform with “strong core commerce capabilities” for the challenges their business is faced with today find in the Intershop Commerce Suite an attractive option while its “strong technical roadmap” helps them to easily tap into coming opportunities in the fast spinning world of B2C. Intershop´s “deep ecosystem of partners” assures the globally available expertise to realize and further develop the envisioned digital landscape.

Also in the B2B sector, Intershop is valued highly by the research experts: While the B2B market is currently undergoing dramatic changes, complexities increase for B2B companies due to channel conflicts and a dramatically changing landscape of competitors. The Intershop offering, however, was noted in the report to be a best fit for complex scenarios: “Intershop is a best fit for brand manufacturers that have complex channel support requirements, need especially well-developed commerce feature functionality, and are looking for flexibility on global pricing and licensing.”

However, complexities and dynamics in the field are unlikely to subside in the coming years. The more important it is for organizations to have a commerce landscape in place that is designed to run a successful business today, but is ready to easily tap into upcoming opportunities. The Forrester report noted the following about Intershop: “On top of solid and well-built commerce features, Intershop demonstrates a strong technical road map and a selectively deep ecosystem of partners and developers ...”

Read the full B2C report here

Read the full B2B report here

The post Intershop recognized as a strong performer in B2C & B2B Commerce Suites by Forrester Research appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.