Transform your B2B e-commerce! Offer seamless experiences to professional buyers, optimise your processes and boost your e-commerce growth.
B2B e-commerce is undergoing a radical transformation. The expectations of professional buyers, now influenced by their B2C experiences, are evolving towards more fluid interactions, exhaustive product information and value-added services. At the same time, companies are looking for solutions to optimise their sales processes, reduce operating costs and provide their sales teams with high-performance tools. How do you reconcile these sometimes contradictory objectives? How can you turn your B2B e-commerce platform into a real catalyst for growth and operational efficiency?
What is modern B2B e-commerce?
A service platform that goes beyond transactions
Modern B2B e-commerce goes far beyond simply digitising the order form. It's a comprehensive services portal that centralises all interactions with your business customers: consultation of personalised catalogues, quotation management, order tracking, access to technical documentation, purchase histories, and much more.
Our collaboration with Azelis, a leader in the distribution of chemical products, demonstrates this global approach: their customer portal integrates not only the product catalogue but also high added-value services such as regulatory documentation and directories, considerably enriching the B2B customer experience.
An integrated architecture at the heart of your IS
The performance of a B2B e-commerce platform depends on its seamless integration with your existing systems: ERP, CRM, PIM, DAM and other business applications. This interconnection ensures the consistency of information (prices, stocks, specific commercial conditions) and enables the automation of numerous processes.
The Arkema project is a perfect illustration of this approach, with the construction of a robust, industrialised foundation capable of accommodating several of the group's brands, while interfacing efficiently with the existing IT ecosystem.
Why invest in a high-performance B2B e-commerce strategy?
Significant reduction in operating costs
Automating ordering processes via a B2B e-commerce platform considerably reduces operational costs. Our experience shows that processing a digital order costs on average several times less than a traditional order by telephone, email or fax.
Digitalisation also allows your sales and administrative teams to concentrate on higher added-value activities, such as advice, prescriptions or winning new markets, rather than on time-consuming administrative tasks.
Intelligence artificielle et personnalisation B2B
The integration of AI and Data technologies is transforming the B2B e-commerce experience. Intelligent search engines understand the natural language and technical specifics of your sector, product recommendations adapt to each customer's profile and history, and specialised chatbots answer specific technical questions.
These AI-based functionalities not only optimise the user experience but also improve the overall efficiency of your platform, as demonstrated by our implementations in the industrial and chemical sectors.
Boosting the sales force
Contrary to popular belief, B2B e-commerce doesn't replace your sales people, it reinforces them. Your platform becomes a strategic tool that provides your sales teams with up-to-date information on products, stocks, specific prices and customer history.
By taking care of recurring, low-value orders, it allows them to concentrate on higher added-value opportunities, as illustrated by our collaboration with Arkema.
Acceleration of time-to-market and business agility
In a constantly changing economic environment, responsiveness is crucial. A modern B2B e-commerce platform enables you to launch new products quickly, adjust your offers and react to market developments.
The implementation of a PIM (Product Information Management) system, as in the case of the Atlantic Group, considerably accelerates the time-to-market of product information sheets, while guaranteeing their quality and consistency across all channels.
Simplified geographical expansion
A B2B e-commerce platform makes it considerably easier for you to expand geographically and conquer new markets, enabling you to rapidly establish a commercial presence in new regions without requiring a complete physical infrastructure from the outset.
The international deployment of the Azelis portal in numerous markets in just a few months demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach for accelerating geographic expansion.
Our approach to B2B e-commerce
A results-oriented strategic vision
At Smile, we approach every B2B e-commerce project with a strategic vision focused on business results. We start by understanding your specific challenges, business processes and customer expectations to define a pragmatic roadmap that maximises ROI at every stage.
Our expertise is based on in-depth knowledge of leading B2B platforms such as OroCommerce, Adobe Commerce B2B, and Shopware, combined with mastery of the key components of a high-performance B2B e-commerce ecosystem: PIM, DAM, integration middleware, specialised search engines and artificial intelligence tools.
A progressive and evolving approach
We favour an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) methodology that delivers rapid results while building a scalable ecosystem. This approach enables us to quickly launch a first functional version of your platform, then gradually enhance it according to user feedback and business priorities.
This method has proved its worth at Arkema, where the success of the MVP validated distributor customers' interest in this new channel and laid the foundations for a more ambitious phase 2, deployed on a large scale with the rest of the IS and internationally.
Mastery of integration and data flows
The performance of a B2B e-commerce project depends to a large extent on the quality of the integration with your existing IS ecosystem. Our technical expertise enables us to design and implement robust integration architectures that guarantee real-time synchronisation of data between your e-commerce platform and your back-office systems.
This control of data flows is particularly critical in the B2B context, where the complexity of business rules (personalised pricing, approval workflows, rights management) requires perfect orchestration of exchanges between systems.
Artificial intelligence applied to B2B
Our expertise in Data & AI enables us to integrate advanced functionalities that transform the B2B user experience:
- Intelligent search engines capable of understanding the technical specifics of your sector
- Recommendation systems adapted to professional purchasing logic
- Specialist chatbots to answer specific technical questions
- Predictive tools to anticipate replenishment needs
Our B2B e-commerce projects
Our teams have successfully supported numerous companies in their B2B e-commerce transformation:
- Azelis: A global customer portal deployed in numerous markets
- Arkema: A B2B e-commerce MVP that validated the value of digital as a business lever for more global deployment
- Somfy: A Digital Factory to accelerate deployment
- Agrial: An omnichannel B2B and B2C ecosystem for the agricultural sector
Conclusion: turn your B2B constraints into competitive advantages
B2B e-commerce is no longer an option, but a strategic necessity for any company wishing to sustain its growth in an increasingly digital market. By digitising your catalogue, services and ordering process, you can not only reduce your operational costs, but also enrich your customer relationships and effectively support your sales force.
By combining technical expertise, business vision and a user-centred approach, we can help you create a B2B e-commerce platform that transforms your constraints into sustainable competitive advantages.
Ready to transform your B2B e-commerce strategy? Contact our experts to define your digital roadmap together!