NetSuite announced that 62% of midmarket, business sellers considering their next ecommerce investment to be a unified, single-stack solution for their ecommerce and back-office systems.
This includes ERP, CRM, and inventory/order management, according to a recent study by Forrester Consulting commissioned by NetSuite.
Respondents ranked better customer experience; improved cost savings and agility to remain competitive as top reasons for migrating customers to their ecommerce channel.
The study also found that most of these companies still use legacy, standalone ecommerce technologies, which can limit their market agility and their ability to fulfill omnichannel customer expectations for the B2B buyer.
Many midmarket B2B sellers say their ecommerce solutions have contributed to their growth in sales, new customer acquisitions and improved customer relationships. Businesses that have adopted a single, unified solution to run their ecommerce and back-office systems reported experiencing greater benefits.
They were 19% more likely to say their ecommerce solution improved cross-sell and upsell revenue, and 14% more likely to credit their ecommerce solution for improving their overall profitability for each customer.
The B2B companies that adopted cloud-based, unified solutions did so to implement more quickly, reduce costs relative to on-premise systems, gain the agility to better respond to fast changing market conditions, and scale more efficiently to help grow their business.
The study found that businesses continue to respond to the shifting, B2B customer preferences of engaging and transacting online. Most B2B buyers prefer the online, do-it-yourself option of researching products and services, and find it more convenient to buy online versus from a sale representative.
Many respondents reported that they continue to experience higher online sales with less overhead, motivating them to make a major investment priority and migrate more customers to their ecommerce website.
“Business sellers realize legacy, standalone ecommerce systems are unlikely to meet the evolving needs of their customers who want seamless, omnichannel buying experiences to engage and transact,” said Andy Lloyd, General Manager of Commerce Products for NetSuite. “A cloud-based, unified solution can provide that experience while streamlining business operations to grow profitably.”
Some additional findings from the study found that B2B online sales continue to rise. About 72% of midmarket, B2B sellers derive at least 25% of their revenue from online channels.
Ecommerce leads technology priorities, approximately 59% of companies surveyed have made ecommerce technology an investment priority in 2016.