Technological advances have changed what customers want out of their online buying experiences. Buyers prefer fast processes and the flexibility to make purchases 24 hours a day. If you’re a B2B seller, the stakes are higher because one sale can make or break your profit margin. Don’t worry. Magento® has you covered. Read about the benefits of Magento Commerce 2.2 for B2B business below.
Magento 2.2 Enterprise and eCommerce B2B Trends
Buyers demand immediacy and convenience. Companies are competing in customer experiences, not only lower prices. Accenture research shows that B2B buyers who shop online behave the following way:
Magento solutions integrate with any backend system and offer all the B2B functions you could want in your online store. There is less complexity to deal with. Best of all, this is accomplished at a lower total cost. That makes it easier for you to afford all the features and functions that your B2B customers want.
The key benefits that you get by choosing Magento Commerce 2.2 for B2B are invaluable. Magento lets you get to the market faster because all solutions are cloud-based and business-ready. It allows you to build customer loyalty by offering useful self-service account management tools. Magento also helps you grow sales with their fast and straightforward purchasing features. A quick buying process is vital to your customers. Magento supports personalized buying experiences for different customer segments, all from one platform. It integrates with any backend system with ready-made connectors and Magento’s wide variety of REST APIs. There is no need to replace or rip-and-repair existing backend. That means your store goes online in a shorter period and at a lower cost.
Magento Commerce 2.2 Capabilities
Now that we know what Magento 2.2 EE can do let’s take a look at some features that will accomplish this.
Useful for you:
Increased Features for Company Accounts
Magento Commerce 2.2 for B2B business includes support for company accounts, not only individuals’ accounts. When your customer is another business, you can be sure that they have their buying infrastructure in place. That means you could be dealing with multiple buyers within the same company. Each would have their buying roles and limits. You can set their buying privileges, roles, and permissions into their accounts.
Self-Service Tools
Magento Commerce 2.2 for B2B companies has several useful self-service tools. Buyers can track their orders, quotes, and credit. There is no need for them to make contact with you to make queries. All the information they need will be available to them at any time via their self-service portal.
Customized User Experiences
Magento 2.2 features offer significant customizations for your customers’ front-end experiences. Catalogs and price lists will adjust what your customers see. These functions depend on what kind of products they prefer. So, you can offer set prices or dynamic pricing to companies. User experiences can also be segmented according to different locations and product lines. So customers can be presented with only products available in their location or their preferred product line.
Useful for you:
Credit Facilities
Magento B2B features enable you to extend credit to your customers. It will increase sales, customer retention and loyalty to your business. Your customers will get access to their self-service tools to manage their credit. You can control credit limits and monitor overall and individual credit usage.
Online Quote System
Magento Commerce 2.2 helps you improve quote response times using a helpful online quote system. It enables users to submit quote requests straight from their online cart. They will also be able to do this using previous quotes and orders. All communication between parties is integrated displayed in the quote-management system. This feature helps track quote adjustments and the reasons for such. All updates are also logged in the quote history so you can see adjustments as they are made. The online quote system can easily handle additions and substitutions. All quotes can be tracked using its self-service portal.
Useful for you:
New Magento 2.2 B2B Features
Let’s take a look at some of the unique enhancements and features that have been made to Magento 2.2 B2B:
New order forms. Now the new forms are incredibly quick. They also now accept uploaded CSV files which helps save the customer time by loading all required items at one time.
Requisition lists. Your customers can now set up requisition lists with products that are frequently purchased. It also saves them time by helping repeat their usual orders automatically.
Reordering feature. Your customers can also reorder using previous orders. Their new order will merely repeat the past order using all its existing product, account and payment details.
Running in the background. When making shared product catalog changes, Magento 2.2 works in the background allowing you to keep working while the shared catalog gets updated. That means more productivity and less downtime.
More useful APIs. The number of Magento 2 APIs has increased to 4 times the previous amount. All new features have simple APIs to handle company accounts, credit limits, shared catalogs, quote management and requisitions lists. There’s also a handy API for tier pricing to adjust prices for several products quickly.
Improved reporting. The Magento 2.2 B2B business intelligence reports now offer four other dashboards. This feature provides valuable insights into essential business aspects. You can quickly view analytics for the entire quote-to-order process to monitor quotes vs. actual orders. You can also track sales rep KPIs which shows you how your sales reps are performing. It also shows company metrics and general customer “health” from an overall perspective. Catalog performances are also easy to view now.