Why is IT the driving [...]]]> One of the things we’ve observed in B2B companies is that most eCommerce initiatives are tightly controlled by the IT department. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but in many companies, we find that the marketing departments are barely involved in the implementation process. That is a bad thing.

Why is IT the driving force in B2B eCommerce? Because implementing B2B eCommerce is complex from an IT perspective. B2B commerce itself is complex- business processes are complex; sales channels are complex; IT system are complex. There are many required integrations, platform selections, development cycles, testing, project management and such. These are areas that IT is experienced with and organized and staffed to manage. Hence, it’s logical that they will do most of the heavy lifting as you build your first online store, but they can’t do it alone.

Your marketing team understands your customers, your products, and your sales channels. That is their job. Marketing needs to be heavily involved from the first day of the project with input into customer requirements, system requirements, and how the systems will integrate with current sales processes and channels. Marketing should recognize the competitive advantages available from eCommerce. Ideally, they should lead the team to create a vision and objectives to leverage those advantages to gain market share and loyalty. Without that knowledge and participation, your online store will likely be underwhelming to your customers.

In our eCommerce projects, we try to engage executive participation from all functional areas to ensure that everyone is on board and provides input into requirements and design. We encourage marketing to take the lead as the project sponsor as they are always closest to the customer and their buying motivations.

In that project sponsor role, marketing will be the customer advocate and should aggressively work with customers to define the customer experience. This should include everything from how a customer finds your store online through the actual sale. It will involve defining content, navigation, presentation, and brand. Merchandising techniques need to be designed and developed. Content will need to be migrated and new content developed. There is a tremendous amount of work that really needs to be done within the marketing team.

The other area of the project that marketing needs to help define is the maintenance and upkeep of the online store and the business processes and systems to support it. How will the store be managed? What control over merchandising and promotions will the marketing team have access to? How will landing pages be developed and who will do it? What types of enhancements will be available in the future? In what timeframe and at what cost? These are crucial components of success. The marketing team needs to be empowered to manage those key aspects of the customer experience. Failure to figure this out up front will limit your success.

IT will be busy defining the system architecture, how to integrate choose and integrate the eCommerce platform into your ERP system, your CRM systems, and build it in a scalable and supportable fashion. They may deliver the resources to build the solution, but marketing needs to be in the forefront driving requirements. Foster Concepts is here to help translate your marketing needs into technical requirements!

So, marketing team, what are you waiting for? It’s eCommerce time for B2B companies. You’ll gain a competitive advantage, increase revenues, and over time, more customer loyalty. That’s your job. Get on it!

We work [...]]]> Are you a B2B company seeking a competitive advantage? Obviously this is a foolish question, every company is. The real question is what strategies are you executing to gain that advantage. Here’s a secret weapon that most B2B companies have still not leveraged to gain market share and lower operating costs – eCommerce!

We work primarily with mid to large market manufacturers and distributors who run their business on Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) and other Oracle products. Surprisingly, few support online sales channels. We even find many Oracle customers who purchased iStore (an Oracle eCommerce platform integrated with EBS) but have never implemented it. Why is that the case? Read our previous post on B2B eCommerce Challenges for details. But, times are changing, and B2B companies are quickly developing eCommerce channels.

Why? Those who are executing an aggressive eCommerce strategy are quickly discovering new ways to gain a competitive advantage by:

• Lowering their cost of sales
• Improving new customer acquisition
• Increasing their revenue per customer
• Improving customer retention
• Discovering new operating efficiencies

You’ll discover positive impacts on your top and bottom line. It’s eCommerce Time! If you are still thinking about developing an eCommerce strategy, we recommend you start executing on one instead.

Planning Your eCommerce Roadmap

Whether your are starting from scratch or planning an upgrade to your current eCommerce platform, we recommend engaging with us to perform an eCommerce Discovery. During this project, we develop a 2-3 year roadmap that will serve as a blueprint for your eCommerce strategy. We take a comprehensive view of how an eCommerce channel will impact your customers, your business processes, your IT systems, and your finances. Here’s a brief overview:

• Start with identifying your executive sponsorship for the project
• Create a cross functional project team with executive representation from sales, marketing, IT, operations, customer support, finance, and other members of the team who will chartered with executing the eCommerce plan
• Meet for onsite for 2-3 days with the entire team with a primary focus on developing an overall vision, business objectives, and identifying alternative strategies for further analysis
• Break the project into smaller teams to further identify and detail customer requirements, system requirements, business process impacts, financial implications, and so forth
• Our Foster Concepts team then develops specific recommendations for strategies, phases, and timelines for the project
• We then meet again with the entire team to review all recommendations and choose strategies for going forward

The duration of the project is generally 3-4 weeks. At the completion of the project, you will be ready to execute the Design Phase of your eCommerce system. You will also have specific and measurable business objectives that will be used to measure the performance of your eCommerce channel.

If your competitors are not yet doing online sales, this is an opportunity for you to gain a competitive advantage. If you are the one behind in eCommerce Time, then you are, or soon will be, at a competitive disadvantage yourself.

Contact us today to learn more about our eCommerce Discovery Service Offering!

On most B2B sites, you’ll find……let’s just say very little of [...]]]> When you visit a major B2C online store such as Amazon.com, Target.com, or Lowes.com, you will find great site design, superb search and navigation, deep content, reviews, effective merchandising, alternative images and video, and sophisticated personalization. Generally, you will have a good shopping experience.

On most B2B sites, you’ll find……let’s just say very little of the above. On the other hand, in order to even launch a B2B online store, you’ve had to invest in solving other really hard problems that most B2C sites do not have to worry about including:
▪    Multiple pricing levels
▪    Payment via purchase orders, terms, ACH as well as credit cards
▪    Account security
▪    Multiple levels of user authorization
▪    Revenue splits with distributors
▪    Sales commissions for various channels
▪    Supporting online customer payments
▪    Providing access to order history, invoices, and statements
▪    Supporting complex product assemblies
▪    Managing availability for all channels

Most B2B companies support several channels of distribution. Adding an online channel may create customer confusion and conflict with other channels. Direct sales organizations are concerned they will lose account control.

As a result, most B2B companies are 8-10 years behind B2C companies in focusing on the customer experience. Online shoppers are looking for an “Amazon like” experience, regardless of whether they are buying for their business or buying gifts for their family. What they get instead is dated search engines, poor navigation, inconsistent site content. Overall, not the shopping experience they want.

It’s time for B2B companies to invest in a better online shopping experience. Tools like Oracle Endeca, which powers more than 40% of the major B2C, can be layered on top of B2B platforms like Oracle iStore to improve the customer experience without throwing away the investment in the underlying eCommerce platform.

Foster Concepts is leading the way by developing a clear upgrade path for iStore and Oracle EBS users. We’ll be talking about this more in the coming weeks and months, so follow us today!

Make [...]]]> With consumer eCommerce spending growing by double digits over the last five quarters, companies are clamoring to increase their share of the pie. Wholesale eCommerce sites are seeing their numbers rise, too, with users demanding more functionality and customer service. But how do you provide your customers what they need without breaking the bank?

Make an Investment
You know your eCommerce site needs to be updated, but the associated costs seem out of reach. Rather than focusing solely on the cost component of the update, focus instead on your return on investment. Establish clear and achievable revenue goals and identify operating costs that can be saved by revamping your site. You will likely find that the cash outlay required for the upgrade can be recouped in six months to a year. Once you’ve identified your revenue and cost-savings goals, record benchmarks of your current state prior to beginning the project. Include key metric reporting as a deliverable for the project. This will ensure that when all is said and done, executives have visibility to what the eCommerce project really achieved.

Know Your Customer
Success in eCommerce relies heavily upon your understanding of your customer and what their needs really are. Resist the urge to chase the newest shiny object, and shift your attention to providing a solid experience for your customer from end-to-end. The customer experience starts the moment they arrive at your site and ends when the product is delivered to their doorstep (or perhaps when the product is returned to you). Conduct some customer interviews and solve their real-world problems with the solution you build.

Build on What You Have
One of the biggest myths in eCommerce is that  a “one size fits all” solution exists and can be easily applied within your organization. Once you know your customer’s needs, you may find that the solution you have will work once you find the right people to extend it. Oftentimes, third party tools can be integrated with your current solution to provide product review or improved search capabilities. If you already have an eCommerce solution, it is likely already integrated with your back end platform and processes;  some incremental improvements to your existing product might prove more beneficial than overhauling your entire eCommerce solution.

Recruit The Right eCommerce Team
Only a solid eCommerce team can build a solid eCommerce experience. Good developers- ones with the technical skills to create the experience your customers want- should be first on your list.  If your current developers don’t have the right skills, partner with a consulting group that can augment your current team, while leveraging the tribal knowledge your current team members bring. Align the developers with a marketing team that knows how to achieve success in eCommerce by using best practices and applying the latest industry trends. All team players must be relationship builders – people who will partner with cross-functional resources  to create a top-notch end- to- end customer experience.
eCommerce represents a major investment for many firms, but by taking some time up front to articulate your goals and pick the right team, you will put your organization in a position to achieve success.

The Internet is a vast land of people with varying opinions – and lots of places that people can go to express those opinions. Keeping up with conversations you’re interested in – or that are related to your business – can [...]]]> Tracking Conversations and Discussions Online: What Are They Saying About You?

The Internet is a vast land of people with varying opinions – and lots of places that people can go to express those opinions. Keeping up with conversations you’re interested in – or that are related to your business – can be a big challenge. Fortunately, there are tools out there that make it a little easier. From free to expensive, these social media and web tracking tools help you streamline your ability to track conversations happening across the Internet. For this post, I’m going to cover some free tools that help you search for relevant conversations.

What are you looking for?

Overall, the tools can be as simple or complex as you would like to get with the information. The key is to figure what you want to discover:

• Do you want to know what customers say about you or your competitors?
• Are you looking for product feedback?
• What are you competitors doing in the online conversations? Do they have blogs or are they active on Twitter?
• Are there influential bloggers who cover your business area?
• Are you looking for people to follow on Twitter?

Using available free tools, you can do a pretty decent job of paring down conversations. All of these tools have you start your search by entering keywords that are important to conversations you’re interested in.  If you have a general keyword, like “plumbing” or “insurance,” every instance of that word will be included in your results — and there will probably alot of results. Find the keywords and phrases that are relevant to your company and goals, and pare down results by adding keywords to your search:

For the plumber, words would be: plumber, your city or location, maybe your company name, a major area competitor

Free tools to track online information

Google Alerts: www.google.com/alerts

With a quick setup, Google Alerts gets you automated updates. You can set up alerts for delivery as it happens, once a day or once a week, and have it sent as an email or added to an RSS feed. You can also decide what results you want to know about: blogs, news, video, Google Groups, etc, or get a comprehensive alert. If you only want to know about blogs, you can select just blogs. Comprehensive will include results for any type of content that Google tracks, and some of it will be delayed, depending on when Google spiders, or finds it. Once you read it, you can decide what to do. Is there a blog post you have an opinion on? Make a comment. Did a competitor add a new product line to the company website? Using Google Alerts to track these website changes means you can focus on your business and track new competitive information when it happens.

Technorati: www.technorati.com

Technorati focuses exclusively on searching blogs. Though some people feel that blogs are just a place for people to talk about their favorite movie stars, what they had for breakfast, and their political views, blogs have become a very important source of information for many.

Plus, there are countless blogs that drive traffic and new customers to business sites. Publicly-traded companies like Microsoft, Hewlett Packard (encourages their employees to have blogs!), and Sony have blogs to create discussions on topics important to their industry and their customers. Technorati helps you discover where conversations are happening that you’re interested in, and find out what bloggers are influential in a particular topic area.

Searching Technorati is just like searching on a search engine. Just type keywords, your company name or a topic into the search box. Or, you can search through Technorati’s categories and most popular discussions.

Twitter Search: search.twitter.com

Many people use Twitter to keep in touch and up to date on what people they are connected with are doing – limited to 140 characters. This communication platform is used around the world, and many times, its a place to find breaking news about events by witnesses on the scene. For example, when the hotel attacks in Mumbai took place in November 2008, initial reports came through people posting on Twitter. From inside the hotel, people were posting updates on what was happening and witnesses on the outside doing the same. When news breaks, most of the time the Twitter universe has it first. The challenge with Twitter is knowing what is fact. This is just another reason why you need to be listening to what is being said out there.

As Twitter is so big, it can be difficult to find conversations or people whose conversations you want to follow. Twitter Search is a simple way to search all of the topics. Find users that are talking about similar interests to your company and industry. Once you find them, join the conversation. Comment about their interests and don’t always pitch your product as that will tune people out. Continue searching with Twitter Search to find people to follow.

BoardReader: www.boardreader.com

Do you work in an area where there’s more message board conversation than blog conversation? If you work in the health field, that may be the case. Message boards aren’t always crawled in Google, so you’ll need to use BoardReader, which tracks more message board content than anyone else. It functions like Twitter Search except that its focus is on forums and message boards. There is a dashboard that lists most popular topics and sites to start your searching.

Topic trending

The Internet is host to a vast array of conversations taking place in real time, from virtually anywhere. Having the tools, and time allocated, to monitor and track this information is vital to doing business in today’s hyper-connected world. To keep from letting it overwhelm you, define your goals and the information you wish to keep track of. This will guide you in the selection of which tools to utilize and maximize your time in finding out what people are saying about you.

If you already have an online store, then you know how important it is to continually drive traffic, increase conversions, and justify spend to make the most of your eCommerce investment. Where do you focus your efforts or even start? Here are 5 areas to focus [...]]]> 5 Ways to Drive eCommerce Revenue

If you already have an online store, then you know how important it is to continually drive traffic, increase conversions, and justify spend to make the most of your eCommerce investment. Where do you focus your efforts or even start? Here are 5 areas to focus on that can lead to an increase in success for your online store:

1. Customer Experience

Just as in walking in a door of your local store, providing an environment that allows someone to get what they want, how they want, sets the stage for success. Understand how your customer’s search, shop, and buy. This means knowing what the goals of your customers are and how to allow for each of your customer types to get what they need.

Do you shop your own online store? Take a moment and go through the process as though you’ve never seen the site before. Create scenarios and goals that a customer comes to your site for and walk through them. Put on your neutral investigator hat and see what potential speed bumps your online store has!

2. Search

Part of the customer experience is being able to find what they are looking for … with their own words. Quite often, we get comfortable with industry terms that we forget our customers may be using different terms. Your products need to be tagged with keywords that users understand search for so that they get to the results quickly. Your search functionality should also users to filter their results by criteria relevant to them. If they are searching for a blender, a search result may yield 100+ results. Don’t expect them to go through all of those to find what they want! Allow them the flexibility to filter by manufacturer, color, and price.

Let the customer create their own path to purchase.

3. Video

Last year (2011), Cisco reported that 10% of Internet traffic was video. By the end of next year (2013), they report that 90% of Internet traffic will be video. People learn the best from visual and audio education which makes video a perfect fit. Show users how they can use the products you want them to buy. Demo the product, show it in action, and talk through how it will benefit them. Speak in their terms, show the product from many angles, and include action. Allow users to share the video through social media and increase your market reach.

4. Email Marketing

Finding new customers is an ongoing strategy that involves creating content, segmenting lists, and reporting. In order to build that prospect list, you need to provide something in return. This can include inviting people to a webinar, whitepaper download, or chance to win something. When you follow-up with these users, be sure to continue providing some type of value. Let them know you’re checking in and share a link to an article that relates to them. Create a relationship with your contacts and turn them into customers.

When talking about email marketing, it’s not just driving new customers to your online store, but getting repeat business. Make sure that you are consistently communicating with your customers from order confirmation all the way through delivery. Even after delivery, follow-up with your customers to survey their experience. If your site has product reviews, ask them to help out the community (or offer a reward), and write a review of the product. It’s about getting your customers engaged with you and the products you have to offer.

5. More Images

People want to see what they are buying. They also want to see it from different angles and being used in its environment. If you sell ski jackets, just showing the jacket won’t provide the full emotional connection. Have an actual person wearing the jacket in skis at the bottom of a ski slope. Allow the user to see the story in the picture and visualize how they would be using the product. Provide more then one image to paint the entire picture.

# 6 – Bonus: Internal Systems

How do you take existing orders and make them more profitable? Your online store needs to be integrated with your order management system, email marketing, and customer service. Go to a whiteboard and map out each step in the process from landing on the site to delivery to customer follow-up. Identify what steps are automated and where there is manual work.

If you need help with any of these processes or strategies, contact us for how we can partner with you to improve your eCommerce revenue and investment!

Many have the view that social media equates to kids walking [...]]]> From Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn, social media is all around us. The tools are available for people to communicate faster, more often, and on your own schedule. Social media is no different then attending a networking event at your local chamber of commerce.

Many have the view that social media equates to kids walking around chatting on MySpace and sending text messages to each other. To some point, and up until 2008, this was fairly true. People active in social media range in age from 25 – 35. That average age continues to climb as more and more signup for services.

Why should a business pay attention to social media? Your customers and potential customers are there. They may be talking about you and your competitors. The topics can be positive or negative, but unless you join the conversation, you will never know. Joining these conversations allows you to find out more about your audience. They will tell you what they like, don’t like, and what you can do to get more business. Decades ago companies would pay thousands of dollars to conduct research to gather this information and now it is just your time.

On Facebook, there are over 700 million active user accounts around the world. Chances are pretty good someone in there may buy your service or product.

There are many ways to attention on Facebook:

• Create an event
• Pay for clicks
• Pay for impressions
• Create a Fan Page for your business
• Just Join!

Then there is LinkedIn which has been equated to the Facebook for professionals. LinkedIn focuses on users’ professional and educational experience and interests. To connect, or link, with other professionals, you must have either worked with, attended school with, or be introduced through someone they know in order to be connected. Everyone is relevant in some way to your interests and the conversations you want to have.

Options to promote a business on LinkedIn include:

• Create a Company Profile
• Answer questions in the forums
• Post jobs
• Create a professional group for your industry
• Connect with others

A much more simple social media tool is Twitter. This just provides a way for you to update people in just a few sentences about what you are doing. No, this doesn’t necessarily have to be what you ate for breakfast. It could be about a new product the company is working on, a link to a survey, or an idea that you may have. A potential customer or investor may be listening and all you need to do is create the interest.

Another social medial site that can be used in conjunction with a blog or company news stories is Digg. This is a site where users can submit links to sites that have stories, images, or videos of interest and comment on them. If another user likes the link, they vote to “Digg” it. The more Diggs a story has, the higher up in the listings it becomes. There have been many times when a story was so popular that the amount of traffic it drove to a website crashed the server. All it takes is an interesting or funny story that directs traffic to your site.

You can become part of the conversation that your customers and prospects are having with virtually no costs. Each site is free to create an account on and provide their unique ways of getting attention. All have a mobile phone application allowing you to stay in touch anytime, anywhere. Start with one and start growing your network to spread the word.