B2B Cloud-Based Platforms Demand Business Simplicity First

Cloud-based platforms have a few major advantages for distributors and wholesalers, including time-to-market and app-stores that are pre-built with easy connectivity. However, it's not all roses and even advanced B2B customizations or apps on top of the simple cloud platforms don't necessarily mean it's going to be easy for you.

There are (at least) two major sources of challenges with these platforms.

1 - Product Data

2 - Customer Pricing

The third problem is likely your ERP, but let's leave this one for now ;-)

Many B2B Companies have product data that is:

- Incomplete

- Solely represented in complicated PDFs (interestingly a lot of fashion brands suffer this same problem as lookbooks are sometimes sent to retailers and become the "system of record")

- Requires large numbers of bundles and variations to represent

- Compatibility and "valid orders" are often based on human judgment.

As far as pricing, the following challenges present themselves:

- There can be as many or more pricebooks as customers themselves.

- Customers can be complex, particularly multi-location customers, each with different "fill" requirements

- Your customer data can be incomplete, do you know who your users will be even? Have you thought about who your early adopters would be?

- You need to make it simpler for a customer to order than picking up the phone. And with product data and reorder complexity, that's not simple.

The benefit to digitizing these types of customers is immense. Why? This complexity means a lot of these products are difficult to represent online, so competition is low. As a result, SEO can be hugely successful.

Standing up the eCommerce platform itself is not the issue. Let's walk into product and customer data briefly.

First, a product data project. There needs to be a way to capture a clean taxonomy and set of attributes which reduce the amount of duplicate data entry.

The compatibility constraints between different types of products in a bundle and overall valid order rules need to be documented clearly, and in a way that is easily implemented.

Second, a customer data project.

If you have N customers and M pricebooks where N is close to M, then you are going to have a challenge. Likely even with the documentation of this pricing.

Planning is the key to this kind of engagement, and the benefits of "getting a cloud platform up in a month" if you have a complex ERP installation with a complex product set and high pricebook to customer ratio, it's not necessarily the case that you just want to transport this business model to the cloud one for one.

You have the opportunity simplify and plan a new way of working. As well as get your head around the fact, that some people you just can't reach. They are going to continue picking up the phone because it's simply more efficient for them to do so.