Digital transformation is becoming essential for those businesses, including business to business (B2B) manufacturers.

A survey of 200 manufacturers found that many have multiple projects underway to upgrade digital supply chains, improve integration, and to increase online sales. Many have plans to go from virtually no online sales to 60% of all sales in the next several years.

Ecommerce for manufacturing businesses

If you're planning to enter the world of ecommerce like a manufacturer, there are several challenges that you will need to tackle, including:

• the quality and depth of the product data
• the accuracy of the inventory information
• how to produce a near-frictionless checkout process
• handling complex and lengthy order-to-cash (O2C) processes
• moving traditional buyers to online channels

You may wish to make sure that ecommerce will improve rather than diminish relationships together with your customers. For manufacturers already on an ecommerce journey many have found they have to handle more customer service enquiries while increased sales reduced their margins and customer loyalty fell because they were tempted by other online offers.

Why are so many manufacturing businesses moving ahead as quickly as possible with ecommerce plans?

Firstly, they need to diversify their sales channels and techniques to address increasing competition and ever-tighter margins. Additionally, there are increased online competition from sector-specific marketplaces and own-brand ecommerce platforms, that are challenging more traditional models of field sales teams and electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions.

The pandemic has significantly increased manufacturers' ecommerce activities, but an even more powerful reason for growth in ecommerce adoption may be the alternation in online B2B buying behavior.

No turning back

Manufacturers who have already adopted ecommerce have experienced that they can generate almost half of their revenue online. Nearly sixty-six per cent of manufacturers now sell online, an increase of 17% from 2022 using more than 36% growth in the use of online marketplaces.

While industry sectors differ, there are several common benefits for manufacturers who have adopted a robust digital strategy, including increased sales and improved customer relationships.

With overview of business processes underpinning the development of a highly effective digital strategy, manufacturers also have reported increased revenue because of improved efficiency and customer experiences.

Half of manufacturers across all industries think that third-party and in-house ecommerce solutions are the main drivers for revenue growth and that they will still be in the next 3 to 5 years.

Some sectors are likely to see a much greater impact in that time, including automotive and machinery manufacturers who're anticipating the biggest proportion of revenue to come from ecommerce.

B2B ecommerce trends for manufacturers

Customer experience – advances in digital technologies have made the move to online sales a practical option while evolving customer preferences mean that expectations are high for online discovery and frictionless sales processes. The important thing to success come in delivering smooth and efficient customer experiences.

There is evidence that B2B buyers want to use online channels and would prefer to buy up to 90% of merchandise online, although under 20% are currently able to perform so. Ease and speed would be the buyers' top priorities, with a fast and easy checkout, easy repeat ordering, quicker deliveries and improved tracking.

New technologies – for those manufacturers which have already moved ahead using their ecommerce plans, the following steps are likely to include headless commerce, voice commerce, configure, price, quote (CPQ), product information management (PIM), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Additionally, real-time integration and automation are reliable and scalable methods to reduce order errors and speed up the complex O2C processes.

Direct to consumer sales – sixty-six per cent of manufacturers state that they previously sell straight to consumers. For many this requires changing to some more customer-centric business design to support direct to consumer (D2C) and business to business to consumer (B2B2C) approaches.

Digital marketing – a variety of tools can expand the potential of internet marketing for manufacturers, including hybrid online and offline events and also the utilization of AI to create actionable insights from large data sets alongside a carefully planned content strategy.

Choose a B2B solution

Cloudfy continues to be designed from the beginning being an ecommerce solution for B2B organizations. They has worked with leading manufacturers to understand the unique needs of the sector and the complexity of the products. That's why we are able to deliver powerful, seamless B2B ecommerce solutions for manufacturers.

Optimizing ecommerce functionality for the end users and distribution partners will differentiate your logo and support your plans for future growth.