Recently I've had the opportunity to chat with a quite a lot of manufacturers and distributors about using direct online access to sales and service for customers and vendors — i.e., a sales portal — in their business strategy. We talked about the specific challenges they are facing, new changes in their industry, and how the Web seems to be the root of much of the change in technology....
xTuple's Collective Brainpower Blog
Who would you say is more loyal than your trusty family dog? What if I told you there's a digital "secret sauce" to fostering such intimate, loyalty-based relationships with your customers ...? Recently, I presented a talk at FABTECH in Las Vegas on growth strategies for manufacturers. My topic was how to develop closer relationships with satisfied customers (and prospective customers) to build a more loyal following, repeat business and referrals.
As a manufacturer, you’ve probably wondered what to make of these new Web technologies everyone is talking about? You’re a manufacturing company, not a retailer. So how can using an eCommerce website increase your productivity and improve your profitability? What’s in it for you, right?
You’re in the business-to-business (B2B) business, and maybe you don’t — or even care to — sell your...
Based on recent results experienced by our manufacturing clients , we’re pretty sold here at xTuple on the benefits of eCommerce for manufacturers . It's clear that customers and resellers are looking for new ways to interact with their key vendors. While it used to be that the ability to self-serve, manage information, reduce acquisition time and gather timely product information was a "nice-...
However you spell the word: Omni-channel, omnichannel or omni channel, instead of arguing about the correct usage, let's just accept that the concept is a force to be reckoned with, if you're doing ANY business online or in person.
We believe that Omnichannel is something new and important, evolutionary or even revolutionary, for businesses.
By no means is the concept new. "...
In the B2B (business-to-business) world, it is not at all uncommon for customers to have account credit or an authorized purchase amount. Are you prepared?
By allowing your customers to place orders using credit on their account, bill me later, or commercial credit cards, you are building a delighted customer interaction, getting them through the buying experience in a faster, more...
One comment that I always share with xTupleCommerce customers is that — to get the most bang for their buck — they must think of their B2B eCommerce solution as a tool for their customers — and other trading partners — rather than just an online store. The xTupleCommerce system is built to make things easier for our customers (the owners of the eCommerce website) and their customers. Our goal...
If you’ve ever worked on an eCommerce project — or any website for that matter, you know how important content is for increasing conversions. The art of fine-tuning marketing content, campaigns, keywords and product descriptions is essential for ensuring customers find your products, get engaged and make purchases. Ensuring that content management is fluid, easy and non-technical was...
During the development stage of planning and building xTupleCommerce (real-time, xTuple ERP-connected Sales & Customer Service online access for businesses), we found that offering the ability to work with pricing schedules on B2B eCommerce sites turned out to be one of the most desired features.
Not familiar with Pricing Schedules? Let me explain.
Imagine you are a...
In any large-scale business-to-business ( B2B) organization, there are a variety of reasons that you want to maintain customer records in your enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. This helps you track sales by customer account, aids you in navigating a customer's past purchase history, gives you insight to the types of products in which a particular customer is interested, and gives...
In large business-to-business (B2B) transactions, it’s typical for a business customer to have multiple users making purchases. A lousy, very unsecured solution to this problem is to create one account for the customer and then expect all their users to share that same username/password. Instead, a better solution is to associate multiple eCommerce accounts with one customer accounts.
...
Let's be honest. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is hard.
There are lots of business problems to solve, and the whole point of an ERP system is unification and integration. It’s easy to dismiss ERP as a legacy holdover of the 80s and 90s, but that would be a mistake. There are many ERP vendors in the world, including xTuple, and we are all trying to solve some of...
It seems like a different era, but I vividly remember the excitement my wife and I felt when thinking about names for our two girls. We decided to keep it a mystery, so we had lists of both boy and girl names. Lots of discussion ensued — as anyone who's been in that happy situation can certainly confirm.
We're going through something similar here at xTuple. We already know quite a bit...
Historically, manufacturers have avoided the adoption of Web technology, especially business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce, into their business plan. Manufacturing is known for its complexities and unique intricacies in planning, workflow, distribution and communications. Until recently, cost effective technology was not available to help manufacturers grow online.
However, times are...
You're trying to grow your business a nd gain a true competitive advantage — whether you're a traditional "brick-and-mortar"-only retailer who needs order entry; a manufacturer who needs a public-facing online business system for billing and product information; or a wholesale distributor or supplier who uses inside and/or outside sales reps.
To achieve that growth, you know you need...
I am very excited to be heading back to the APICS show in Las Vegas next month. This year, xTuple is a proud sponsor of APICS2015, the premier conference for supply chain and operations management professionals. It's been a few years since we have attended, and I am sure APICS, like lots of other conferences over the last decade, has seen some changes.
This year seems to be getting...
Forrester Research recently published an evaluation of business-to-consumer (B2C) solution providers — IBM, Oracle, Netsuite, eBay, SAP, others — that serve large, complex organizations.
While there are many substantive differences between B2C and business-to-business (B2B) transactions, a topic for another blog post, there was a particularly insightful and useful breakdown of a good eCommerce solution that is applicable to both.
Forrester calls them the ‘four foundational pillars’ and we thought we’d pass them along.
In large business-to-business (B2B) transactions, it’s fairly typical for a business customer to have multiple locations where they need to ship products. A good example is a construction company that has multiple active jobs and needs supplies sent to those jobs.
With xTupleCommerce, your customers can log into your eCommerce site and manage the shipping locations for specific orders...
Let’s imagine that you are a manufacturer or distributor selling a range of products. You have a team of sales representatives that process orders on behalf of their customers or accounts. These sales reps may be your direct employees or other types of trading partners.
If you don’t have a Web-based solution for your sales reps to process orders, then they are likely meeting with their...
eCommerce is not the way of the future; it’s the way of the present. Consumers are now fully comfortable researching products and making purchases online. Even from their phones. Not only are people buying online, they are involving themselves in the entire shopping experience on the Internet.
This is a pretty straight-forward process for typical consumers. Let’s imagine that you want...