B2B e-commerce PLAYBOOK AND reSource guideB · tive, state-of-the-art business customer experiences that maximize your conversion rates and gross revenues. As your company progresses

BBest practices and resources for

companies researching, justifying, developing, launching, and maintaining

successful B2B e-commerce operations

B2B e-commercePLAYBOOK AND

reSource guideB2

saP hybris case studies / reference customers

saP hybris white Papers and solutions Briefs

saP hybris B2B accelerator

Vendor comparison tool

guidance from forrester

commerce Platform decision resources

stage 5: ongoing maintenance, support and operations / Phase 2Decision Point: Internal or External Support? 45

Comparing Phase 1 to Phase 2 46

stage 4: Build out and launchDesign, Wireframe, and Coding 34

stage 3: selecting a Platform Partner

stage 2: gathering requirementsWho Should You Include in the Requirements Gathering Process? 23

What Requirements Should be Examined? 24

Benefi ts of Agile Methodology: Test Early and Often 25

stage 1: research and Justifi cationOnline Selling Can Improve Gross Revenues 15

Research Is Now Digital 17

Self-Service Is Win-Win 19

Loyalty Is Easier to Build 22

Before starting

B2B e-commerce roadmap

commerce Platform implementation Best Practices

contentSsection 1 section 2

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39

11 49

57

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29 63

about saP hybris

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6

section oneCommerce Platform Implementation Best Practices

When doing business with you in their pro-fessional lives, they also expect and demand similar, convenient, effi cient shopping and purchasing experiences. SAP Hybris delivers comprehensive B2B commerce solutions that assure your business customers’ SAP Hybris shopping experiences are as advanced as the Web’s best consumer sites – highly produc-tive, state-of-the-art business customer

experiences that maximize your conversion rates and gross revenues.

As your company progresses down the path of research, justifi cation, platform selection, implementation, and ongoing maintenance of your B2B commerce infrastructure, there will be a number of critical steps along the way.

B2B e-commerce roadmaPThe needs of B2B buyers are changing rapidly. As consumers, they expect a highly personalized and responsive shopping experience when they engage with retailers, banks, and other digitally advanced companies on the Web, via mobile browsers, or offl ine, in physical stores.

3. Vendor selection

Vendor research / scorecard

1. research and Justification

Business Case/ROI basics

Increase in sales, operational efficiencies, and loyalty

FEEDBACK LOOP

2. requirements gathering/rfP

Don’t automate a bad process

Involve stakeholders and customers

Data and integrations

5. ongoing suPPort Phase 2

Choose a support model

In-house or outsourced support

Phasing out remaining requirements

4. Build and launch

Project scope for initial launch

Continued involvement of stakeholders

Timeline and tradeoffs

B2B e-commerce roadmaP

109

Before StartingThe complexity involved with implementing a commerce platform should never be underestimated!

A surprising number of commerce implementations begin without a clear view of the organization’s vision for a successful outcome, who is going to be involved, and when. These organizations may lose weeks or months resetting expectations, redefining their projects, and resolving the frustrations of their stakeholders. Sometimes they run out of time and resources, and ultimately wind up going live with fewer commerce functions than they had hoped.

This can be easily avoided if the planning is completed properly before the implementation is scheduled to begin. Start your project with the best possible foundation of vision and resources, and make sure that the three following key components are in place.

What is your long-term vision for commerce?

Who are your key stakeholders in the commerce platform?

What are your short-term project goals and objectives?

What will define the success of your commerce initiative?

What are your current commerce pain points?

Do you have any target metrics or KPIs?

What is your change management strategy?

Does your organization have the required skills to implement?

Have all of your requirements been adequately documented?

Below is a short list of suggested questions for your organization to answer Before emBarking on a new commerce ProJect.

oVerall commerce strategy

Identify what the organization needs to achieve, then define spe-cific expectations around how the SAP Hybris implementation will impact and benefit these strategic objectives.

cross-functional team

Identify responsibilities for techni-cal and business stakeholders during the implementation, and consider changes to roles, skills, responsibilities, and organizational structure that will be necessary after implementation.

Partnering strategy

Even the best partners and the greatest companies can be mis-matched. Define what is important to your organization and be ready to share it with your existing or po-tential partners. By ensuring these criteria have been defined and understood by everyone involved, you can frequently prevent many of the common problems associated with launching a new or enhanced commerce platform.

11

This stage often includes a business case and ROI analysis to determine the core reasons why you are investing in a B2B e-commerce platform. This consists of presenting the evidence to management that the upside for building an online B2B business adequately justifies the expense.

stage 1: reSearch / JuStification

ROI is commonly broken down into two compo-nents: revenue upside and cost reduction (ope-rational efficiencies). At SAP Hybris, we believe that both parts of the equation are equally important, although your specific business dynamics will determine which has the larger effect on your business outcomes.

The third component is customer satisfaction and retention. While this may not show up on a P&L each quarter, the positive effects will be seen by the company.

*Forrester Research B2B eCommerce Forecast 2015 to 2020

fact: B2B Buyers are Buying more online

how haVe your B2B online work related Purchases

changed from 2014 t0 2015?

65%haVe increased total sPend on

work Purchases

63%haVe made more

Purchases online

53%haVe increased

their aVerage Purchase size

14

insight from the front lines:

the JuStification ProceSSYour initial market research will quickly determine that building out an e-commerce platform is essential to keep up with your competitors and satisfy the demands of your customers. Top management will invest a lot of time rationalizing the expenditures, conside-ring all the options, and creating a cost analy-sis and projected ROI. Your CEO will want this, and your CFO will insist on it. Every company goes through this stage, and four to six months will fl y by very quickly. Be patient and let this process run its course – it’s a necessary part of corporate life. The Catch-22 is that justifi -cations and ROI projections at the beginning of the project can seem like lost time.

That said, the ROI exercise highlights whe-re your particular business might benefi t most from e-commerce.

However, whatever ROI you do up front is strictly a theoretical model. You will be able to calculate ROI on the back-end much more easily, and with much greater accuracy. You won’t have the real numbers until you get to Stage 4 of the project, and your fi rst B2B site is up and running. That’s when you’ll prove its worth and, based on real world analytics, you can fi ne tune your marketing strategies, scope out new features and functionality, and move on to Phase 2, where you will add the additional elements you didn’t have time for in Phase 1.

One of your fi rst challenges will be customer adoption – persuading them to use the new site. That’s when you will have real numbers to measure ROI and justify future enhancements.

15

online Selling can loWer coStS and oPen neW marketSBefore a company selects and implements a new commerce platform, business sta-keholders and the technology implementa-tion team should establish a consensus on all strategic objectives.

During this process, it’s a good idea to develop a business case for a modern commerce plat-form that highlights the investment that will be required compared to the cost savings and revenue improvements. Then input the expec-ted benefi ts into your annual budget process to ensure a full business commitment to the new commerce model enabled by the platform.

Two major categories feed into this business case and budgeting process:

hard cost saVings…

…such as reduced order processing costs, lo-wer cost of goods and supplies, and increased effi ciencies in sales and marketing expenses.

reVenue gains…

…that can be expected from increased agili-ty, real-time updates (products, pricing) for customers, and improvements in the customer ordering experience, including self-service.

forecast:us B2B ecommerce sales 2015 – 2020

$690 BILLION

7.4%

12.7%

9.3%

9.6%

8.5%

7.7%

6.2%

12.1%

11.6% 6.7%

11%

10.5%

9.9%

YOY GROWTH

SHARE OF B2B SALES

8.5%

$780 BILLION

$855 BILLION

$928 BILLION

$999 BILLION

$1066 BILLION

$1132 BILLION

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

Base: 696 (930 in 2014) business decision-makers with more than 1,000 employees (500+ in Europe) in North America and EuropeSource: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of SAP Hybris and Accenture Interactive, September 2015 and August 201417

B2B Buyers research the lion‘s share of their Business Purchases onlinereSearch iS noW digital

Three-quarters of B2B buyers do online research for at least half of their work-related purchases, according to Forrester studies, and 30% complete at least half of their work purchases online.

That last number is expected to double over the near term, and B2B sellers should plan for a signifi cant volume of their business currently transacted through traditional offl ine means to move online.

When one of your customers runs a search, lands on a competitor‘s website and fi nds an

item they need along with a host of information about that product, how likely are they to leave that site and navigate over to your site to make a purchase?

If the competitor offers a frictionless purchase opportunity, comparable prices, and a better customer experience, you may never hear from that customer again, no matter how loyal they have been in the past.

BUY

of those work-related Purchases made offline, what Percentage are tyPicallyresearched online as Part of the Process in 2014 and 2015?

75% OR MORE

22%

25%-49%

29%

50%-74%

24%11%-24%

18%

1%-10%

7%

2014: 21%

2014: 21%

2014: 19%

2014: 12%

2014: 24%

19

Self-SerVice iS Win-WinB2B commerce can help companies reduce costs, and can take various forms, depending on the nature of the business. Self-service capabilities are satisfying for many customers – in fact, many de-mand it – while rewarding sellers with reduced costs and by using automation. When a company automates and optimizes self-service capabilities, they enjoy signifi -cant savings on the back-end through both convenience and effi ciency.

The Forrester Wave™: B2B Commerce Suites, Q4 2013, Forrester Research, Inc., October 7, 2013

information for customers and internal constituents:Reduced customer service time spent on pro-viding product content, prices, confi gurations, and availability to both customers.

ordering: Reduced time and effi ciency in ordering.

reduced errors: Order accuracy is often greater for online or-ders than those entered manually by traditional means.

customer serVice/rePorting: An online B2B site gives customers a self-ser-vice portal to request quotes, ask questions, enable maintenance, and access reports.

Base: 45 B2B e-commerce ProfessionalsSource: The Forrester Wave™: B2B Commerce Suites, Q4 2013,Forrester Research, Inc., October 7, 2013

By migrating customers to a commerce Portal to Purchase their Products, our customer suPPort costs haVe…

INCREASED

9%

STAYED THE SAME

30%

DON‘T KNOW

9%

DECREASED

52%

22

how much do you agree or disagree with the following statement*:

“We can build loyalty with customers more effectively in an online-only environment than we can with those same B2B customers in an offl ine-only environment.“

44% AGREE

28% DISAGREE

total

total

65% AGREE

>25% of B2Bsales online

10% DISAGREE

>25% of B2Bsales online

51% AGREE

SELLING ONLINE 5 YEARS OR MORE

24% DISAGREE

SELLING ONLINE 5 YEARS OR MORE

More satisfi ed customers stay with you longer – increasing orders, referrals, and lifetime value. SAP Hybris customers commonly report that online B2B customers are of higher value than offl ine customers. A recent Forrester study found that B2B businesses fi nd it easier to build loyalty with online customers.

B2B companies fi nd it easier to build loyalty with online-only customers than with offl ine-only customers.

loYaltY iS eaSier to Build

Among the best justifi cations (aside from dollars and cents) are the facts that:

Your customers are online, and they expect you to be online with a Mobile and B2C-like experience

Your competitors are online and, if you aren’t, it can become a potentially fatal disadvantage

Business Buyers exPect a moBile / B2c exPerience:

For example Amazon Supply is now investing aggressively in the B2B world, and is becoming a strong force in B2B markets.

data PointS

*Base: 353 online B2B companies around the world (147 B2B companies with greater than 25% sales online, 156 B2B companies that have been selling online for fi ve years or more)Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of SAP Hybris, September 2013

a)

b)

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Analysts at Virtusa Corporation estimate that as many as 60% to 70% of all IT pro-jects fail to fulfill planned requirements while adhering to the mandated schedule and budget. One of the key reasons for project failure is a sub-standard require-ment analysis – i.e., not knowing “what” you’re delivering.

who should you include in the re-quirements gathering Process?

Be sure to involve all necessary stakeholders. If you need approval from someone before your commerce site can go live, it’s a good idea to have them participate in defining the requirements.

stage 2: gathering requirementS

Customers are a critical component. It cannot be overstated that customers need to be at the center of every requirements gathering exercise.

You’ll also need an inclusive group of subject matter experts, or SMEs. Make sure that mem-bers of this cross-functional team represent finance, HR, operations, customer service, inside sales, field sales, etc.

Next to strategy, your internal team struc-ture is the next most important factor when undertaking a new commerce initiative. It’s a common mistake to begin a new implementati-on before adequately evaluating new roles and organizational changes needed for launch and ongoing maintenance. This can be avoided by predicting future business and technical skill requirements before you start your implemen-tation, and reorganizing your business and technical teams accordingly.

what requirements should Be examined?

Forget about implementation details and technical issues. When gathering require-ments, do just that – collect ONLY the initial requirements. There will be many people along the way who want to show you how to imple-ment the solution. But refrain from taking their advice, at least at the beginning. There will be adequate time for that later.

Anticipate the end results, or “skate to where the puck will be”. That popular sports quote applies here. Don’t worry about documenting the current way things and processes work, but be adamant about how they should work. What is the desired outcome and how will the customer be best served in a perfect world?

Be clear and concise. Requirements should be

written with the assumption that you will not be there to inform the person reading them – they should stand on their own and be clear to an outsider or newcomer.

insight from the front lines: don’t automate a Bad Process.

One of the biggest mistakes we made up front was not spending time figu-ring out how a B2B commerce site would change how we currently do business – and then building the functionality to meet the future needs of customers.

25

…I need the ability to roam warehouse and enter orders.

…I need approval from my supervisor before placing an order.

…I need to be able to place bulk orders.

…I need videos and technical specs of the products I am purchasing.

When possible, leave room for building a minimal viable product (MVP) to put in front of customers early. What you think will be the kil-ler app on your commerce site may be a yawn for customers (and vice versa). While it is not right for every project, agile methodology re-serves time in the development cycle, allowing for greater fl exibility in both your timeline and your fi nal product.

Benefits of agile methodology:

teSt earlY and oftenAs a starting point, it is best to establish a core set of use cases to be leveraged by the team for discussion and collaboration. Later, you can pivot and identify additional needs that should be considered, but you want to be careful not to get bogged down with too many use cases at the beginning.

“as a corporate manager…“

Not doing suffi cient due diligence

Wording queStionS in a WaY that enaBleS the Vendor to “SPin“ or oBfuScate the truth

TRYING TO BETOO IMPARTIAL

not inVolVing all of the stakeholders

Not having a budget before issuing an RFP

leaVing the rfP ProceSS to the Procurement dePartment

ignoring the PeoPle asPects////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Inviting too many vendors to bid

TEN RFP

e-commerce platform MOST COMMON

NOT ASKINGQUESTIONSTHAT CAN BE EASILY

comPared

one

six

THREE

TEN

FIVE

four

eight

Taking the short view

3029

stage 3: Selecting a Platform PartnerIn the previous stages, you crea-ted the cross-functional team and orchestrated many of the prepara-tory elements of your e-commerce initiative, such as presentations to management and RFP requirement gathering.

In this next, critical stage of vendor analysis, qualification, and selecti-on, the cross-functional team will assume the crucial role of choosing and bringing on board one or more organizations that will become your development partner, platform sup-plier, and integration team.

For the person or team in char-ge of e-commerce within your company, developing an RFP will require between three and six months.

The next step will be to choose seven to ten vendors and solicit their responses. Even though you may have worked many months to develop your RFP, you’ll probably want your vendors to respond wi-thin a few weeks or a month. Then review their responses and reduce the number of candidates to three or four, to participate in deeper reviews, demonstrations, and pilot projects. You might make your selections based on pricing, time frames, feature sets, references, and track record.

If you’ve completed Stages 1 and 2 correctly, and if you’ve crea-ted the right team to manage Stage 3, you will make the right decision that will work for the company.

Your internal team may include people from IT, finance, marketing, operations, and logistics – these are the people who will assure that your total solution works – and this solution is much more than just the commerce platform. It will include integrations with financial systems, marketing systems, change ma-nagement, operations, warehouse management, supply chain ma-nagement, inventory, fulfillment, hiring decisions, and personnel assignments. The entire project

At the very end, you’ll want to find the best fit for your company, and determine whether the vendor with the right price and set of features matches your company‘s size and culture. No matter how you manage the vendor selection process, there will always be unexpected challen-ges, and it can be difficult to make decisions. You might find that you want to second-guess yourself, and this is natural, because you really want to maximize your money, and maximize what you’re doing for your company. After you make the final vendor selection, you’ll have to cre-ate a plan for how you’re going to get everything done in the time and money allotted, and move forward,

team, or at least a core group, will remain involved in vetting and choo-sing all of the components along the way. The commerce platform itself is just one piece of a larger organizational structure.The indi-vidual or sub-team responsible for the commerce system won’t have expertise in everything. The supply chain team will make critical decisi-ons, and the finance group will be best equipped to make budget and capital decisions. Your IT team will determine how to manage all of the integrations. By bringing the right people to the table to make sure all stakeholders have given their input, everyone will feel that their needs were considered and that their voices were heard along the way.

working within the constraints. No matter which platform you choose, you’re going to have some cons-traints. You must be able to fully trust your platform vendor, system integrator, and your internal IT team. Always believe that you’ve made the right decision.

Ultimately, Stage 3 is about making sure that Stage 4 is fully enabled and has everything needed to be implemented successfully.

3231

Robust, modular, and open archi-tecture will satisfy your omni- channel selling and fulfillment requirements and provide the foundation for your commerce experience. Tip: Select a solution that is built to scale your high traffic and high transaction requirements without breaking your budget.

B2B buyers expect the same omni-channel experiences they receive as consumers. Build a site that delivers B2B user experiences on par with the best B2C websites. While your buyers enjoy rich functi-onality and personalization, you will maximize loyalty and revenue.

The collection, cleansing and main-tenance of your data is the founda-tion of a successful B2B commerce website, so it follows that your PCM must be powerful and easy to use. Tip: Skimp in other places and get the best PCM available to you.

Streamline your order processes across all channels with an order management system (OMS), enab-ling orders to be routed to the most efficient shipping location. Tip: This capability will be crucial as you grow your fulfillment and drop ship network.

The standards for customer engagement are now much higher. Tip: Customers are looking for high quality, relevant content within tailored, contextual experiences based on their available historical customer data and current buying journey data.

If you are planning on being in the B2B commerce business for the long haul, then you better make sure your partner is as well – not only looking at how long they have been in business is important, but also if their revenues are growing and they are making money, or bringing in investment dollars

PARTNER Scoring tiPS

content PROduCT

PCMmanagement

architecture

technologYproven

track RECORD

orchestration

&order

customer exPerience

33

The key to this stage is the skill level and experience of the internal IT organizati-on, design firm, and/or system integra-tion partner. It’s common at this point to complete a scoping exercise to determine the features and functionality that can go live in Phase 1. While the RFP contains all the features that are ultimately wanted, a subset may need to be prioritized and im-plemented first, to meet time and budget constraints.

stage 4: Build out and launch

suPPort &oPerations

feasiBility foundation exPloration engineering dePloyment

design, wireframe, and coding

Website design includes creating the wirefra-me, data elements, and user experience desi-red from the commerce platform, balanced against your company’s culture, brand and logo standards, and other internal requirements.One of the more critical steps in the definition of a website is for marketing and business users to collaborate on the visual design of the site and its branding. Optionally, a UI/design agency can assist with this part of the project.

this Process often includes the following stePs:

Site Map: Overall page structure of the website

Wireframes: Structure and templates of all pages

Navigation: The flow of the website and how customers access your

products

Visual elements, including colors, fonts,

logos, images, etc. (and CSS)

Personalization: How the website changes

based on profile attributes of the user

It is critically important for the developers to have a solid understanding of the website‘s inputs and outputs in order for them to fulfill all specifications.

N

3635

Generally consists of the following steps:

Website wireframe HTML Prototype Visual elements JavaServer Pages Development

The website wireframe, page schematic, or screen blueprint is a visual guide that repre-sents the skeletal framework of a website. Wireframes are created for the purpose of arranging elements to best accomplish a parti-cular purpose. The wireframe depicts the page layout or arrangement of the website’s content, including interface elements and navigational systems, and how they work together. The wire-frame usually lacks typographic style, color, or graphics, since the main focus lies in functiona-lity, behavior, and priority of content. It focuses on what a Web page does, not what it looks like. Wireframes can be pencil drawings or sketches on a whiteboard, or they can be produced by means of a broad array of free or commercial software applications.

Wireframes are generally created by business analysts, user experience designers, develo-pers, visual designers, and other roles with expertise in interaction design, information architecture and user research.

wireframes focus on:

...the rules for displaying certain kinds of information

...the relative priorities of the information and functions

...the effect of different scenarios on the display

...the kinds of information displayed

...the range of functions available

weBsite wireframeThe wireframe also connects the underlying conceptual structure, or information architecture, to the visual design of the website. Wireframes establish functionality, and the relationships between different screen templates. Creating wireframes is an iterative process, and an effective way to make rapid prototypes of pages, while measuring the practicality of a design concept.

Visual elementsVisual design takes the complete wireframes to the next step by adding elements of color, font, style, and icons to provide the visual ela-boration of what the website will look like. This typically includes the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) which are essentially a repository of standards (fonts, colors, etc.) that are used across the website.

html PrototyPeThe HTML Prototype takes this as input and creates a “clickable UI” that can be displayed/demoed to the business users and provide a close representation of what the website will look like. Since the website has not been built yet (just the front end UI), customer, product, and other integration data is not yet available, but the HTML prototype does give the business a good representation of what the website will look like and how the functionality will be displayed.

JsP deVeloPmentWeb developers commonly use HTML to build a website. Once this is complete, it is no longer a simple task to make changes to the look and feel of the page originally provided in the HTML file. That is because these elements are now intertwined with the logic necessary to render the pages dynamically. This is important to understand, because making changes at this point can extend the duration and cost of the project.

Following the guidelines above can help minimize changes later in the project, and help keep the project on time and within budget.

1 2 3 4

creating a comPleted uSer interface

37

Before you write even one line of code, you have to make sure your data is 100% correct. You must know how your integrations are going to work, because if you magnify a few small


a commerce Site iS a giant magnifYing glaSSfocuSed on Your data

problems in a data set across a million pro-ducts or SKUs, you may fi nd yourself in trouble.If your integrations aren’t 100% correct, you’ll be setting yourself up to fail.

98% correct can result in 100% failure...

Errors tend to hide other errors

“Quick and dirty” fi xes are essential to drive velocity

Simple errors can block multi-day test scenarios for a project, or disrupt a business process within operations

4039

This stage follows the deployment of the application and the handover from the project team to the support and operations teams.

stage 5: ongoing maintenance, SuPPort & oPerationS / PhaSe 2

the suPPort team will need to manage a wide range of requirements:

While your hosting company may provide fi rst level support if a server goes down, it’s wise to assemble a team dedicated to ongoing support and development of the site (including Phase 2 and beyond requirements).

Changes in fulfi llment or 3PL partners

Mobile application development

International expansion: multi-currency, multi-lingual

Payment processing

Integrating new touch points/omni-channel management

Page speed and load time optimization

Application and server monitoring

Feature/functionality enhancements

Ongoing bug fi xes

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Data and partner integrations

Web analytics integration

4241

Monitoring user satisfaction, traffi c, data volumes, and system performance to assure fast, proactive resolution of unexpected issues

Ensuring the availability of the application as agreed upon in the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between the end customer and application support team / operations and hosting team

Establishing proper levels of user and system support to resolve any issues related to the commerce platformReporting on encountered

malfunctions and their resolutions

Maintaining all parts of the platform, including applying patches, verifying optimal confi gurations, and making sure that the system can handle steep traffi c increases following planned campaigns

the main oBJectiVes of the suPPort & oPerations Phase are:

the actiVities that take Place during Phase 2 include:

Making continuous impro-vements, new features, and new releases. Assuring that there is

a clear process for implemen-ting change requests, installing

new releases, and resizing the solution to accommodate

predictable traffi c spikes

Patching and maintaining the system

Maintaining system confi guration and

maintenance documents

Maintain communication with hosting team

Updating system documentati-on functionality, confi guration, use cases, and environmental

factors change.

Communicating all new policies and job descriptions

as they evolve.

44

One of the steps often missed in planning an e-commerce strategy is how to support it after it’s live.

Don’t wait until the site is in development or has

gone live before making this critical decision.

MAKE A DECISION

HOW TO SUPPORT

SUPPORT TEAMIdeally, you should identify your ongoing support team, whether internal or external - and have them working with you during the development stages.

deciSion Point: internal or external SuPPort?There are a number of considerations and tradeoffs involved in the decision to support your e-commerce site in-house or through an outsourced partner. These include:

cost/exPertise: The cost of an outsourced firm is likely to be higher than in-house, but an external firm will likely have more resources available when you need to scale up development, or have a tricky coding problem to solve.

dedicated resources: Will your in-house team be dedicated to your e-commerce business, or are they shared across the business?

control: How much control do you have over an outsourced team – are they in your time zone and do they have a full-time, expert project manager on their side?

Plan your maintenance and support ops long before going live.


45

to have to launch

have for launch

must

nice

Think about scope early in the process. It’s easy to try to document every piece of functionality you want from your new B2B website – and invest many weeks documenting them. Then, when the scoping and budgeting discussion comes, spend more time prioritizing them.

We suggest prioritizing up front. This saves time and avoids management confusion at inopportune times. Create buckets that work for your business, and fully document those that will go live at launch time.


ScoPing out Your commerce Solution

rank them as follows:

but can wait forPhase 2

important

launch

48

section twoCommerce Platform Decision Resources

the forrester waVe B2B commerce suites In this report, available through SAP Hybris, Forrester Research looks at how manufac-turers, distributors and other B2B fi rms are working to better serve their sales channels through digital experiences and by developing new business models to support complex selling relationships with distributors, resellers,partner networks, employees, retail stores, and end consumers. eBusiness professionals are making signifi cant investments in next-gene-ration B2B commerce technologies to enable these transformations, and unraveling the vendor landscape remains a challenge.

online and moBile are transfor-ming B2B commerce This useful document includes the fi ndings of a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on B2B Commerce. Over 700 B2B companies were surveyed, of which 353 companies sell direct to businesses online. Key fi ndings were that online and mobile are transforming B2B commerce and that businesses have to act fast to not fall behind.

guidance from forreSter According to a report from Forrester Research, Inc., B2B eBusiness professionals are looking at alternatives to point solutions and niche vendors. Players today offer “integrated technology stacks, feature-rich APIs, and end-to-end e-commerce capabilities aimed at serving diverse customer segments both browsing and buying across multiple touchpoints,” Forrester wrote.

B2B platforms are being increasingly used to manage strategic challenges, Forrester says, and managers are relying more on commerce platform vendors as strategic partners to be more invol-ved with managing their B2B relationships with both online and offl ine customers. A solution from SAP Hybris is evaluated in the report, with SAP Hybris positioned as a leader.

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saP hyBris

The uniqueness of the SAP Hybris architecture addresses the custo-mer lifecycle to deliver a combined commerce and order management platform. This includes exten-sibility so well defined that we have built a partner marketplace to plug leading functionality into the commerce experience. Our ease of integration and extensive service-oriented architecture is en-gineered to work with your existing infrastructure. Read more at www.Hybris.com/en/commerce/architecture-technology

Vendor 2 Vendor 3

Vendor comParison tool

architecture and technologY

Unimportant Moderately important Important Very importantOf little importance

saP hyBris

More than half of global B2B buyers expect to make 50% of their purchases online within three years. Like consumers, they expect consistent omni-channel experi-ences, self-service access, and accurate information. SAP Hybris B2B Commerce helps you adapt to the changing needs of your busi-ness customers. Our omni-channel commerce software is designed to support even the most com-plex B2B environments. Get more information at www.Hybris.com/en/downloads/product-collateral/b2b-commerce/101


B2B commerce Vendor 2 Vendor 3


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saP hyBris

Highly profitable commerce sites don’t just help customers find what they are looking for. They help them find what they aren’t looking for – but still want and will buy. The SAP Hybris Cross-Selling Module enables you to manually define cross-selling or up-selling rules to deliver product recom-mendations to boost sales. See more info at www.Hybris.com/ modules/cross-selling

Vendor 2 Vendor 3


Product content management


saP hyBris

SAP Hybris Order Management helps you increase profitability through centralized order orche-stration. Your customers interact with your brand on numerous touch points, be it their PC, their mobile or the point of sale in your store. They expect a seamless and highly interactive shopping experience. More details are available at www.Hybris.com/en/downloads/product-collateral/order-manage-ment-services/108


order orcheStrationVendor 2 Vendor 3


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Vendor 3saP hyBris

For organizations today, the bar for customer engagement has been raised. It takes more to win and retain loyal customers – standard, mass-segmentation driven content and experiences are not enough. Customers are looking for high qua-lity, relevant content within tailored, contextual experiences based on their available historical customer data and current buying journey data. Learn more at www.Hybris.com/en/commerce/customer-expe-rience

Vendor 2


cuStomer exPerience


Vendor 3saP hyBris

SAP Hybris solutions are often de-signed, planned, implemented, and supported by an elite group of part-ners worldwide, each with consider-able experience on the SAP Hybris platform through their own proven track record, by gaining appropri-ate knowledge, and earning SAP Hybris certifications. Every certified SAP Hybris partner has significant certified resources to support a wide range of industries and diverse B2B customers around the globe. Read more at www.Hybris.com/en/find-a-partner


ProVen track recordVendor 2


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Vendor 3saP hyBris Vendor 2


referenceS


Vendor 3saP hyBris


concluSionVendor 2

SAP Hybris offers a state-of-the-art deployment accelerator – essentially a pre-built B2B e-commerce store ready to activate the functionality you need, and rapid-ly input your product content and information. Get online faster with the SAP Hybris B2B Commerce Accelerator – a production-ready, customizable, multi-channel framework designed for business-to-business trading.

Support complex product catalogs, pricing logic, and user/role management.

Rapidly deploy and manage multiple B2B sites on a single platform.

Use existing catalogs, content, and infrastructure to create

custom sites and catalogs.Easily manage sites with multiple languages, currencies, brands, taxes, and other regional requirements.

Develop and manage content with a built-in, intuitive Web-based product content management system

that includes effective workflow management.

Centralize order management capabilities to enable efficient omni-channel fulfillment.

Deploy SAP Hybris B2B commerce in the way that best fits your needs – either on-pre-mise, hosted by SAP Hybris, or on-demand in the cloud.

Enrich your product descriptions with high-resolution images and videos, managed

by built-in digital asset management (DAM).Consolidate and manage all product content and attributes across all channels via native integra-tion with SAP Hybris’ award-winning master data management and product content management solution (SAP Hybris PCM).

Maximize SEO rankings with out-of-the box tooling.

Support all channels – Web, mobile, and offline vehicles,

such as print catalogs.

SaP hYBriS B2B accelerator

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SaP hYBriS White PaPerS and SolutionS BriefS Building an roi to

eValuate your B2B e-com-merce initiatiVe

This white paper provides a frame-work for building an ROI model that can be used to demonstrate the advantages of a new e-commerce implementation to senior executives and board members.

saP hyBris B2B commerce

This document describes how SAP Hybris B2B Commerce reduces complexity by consolidating the management of multiple business models, channels, and markets. It shows how B2B organizations can accommodate a variety of suppliers, distributors, and stores on a single platform, while automating sales administration and maintaining the operational efficiency required to drive customer satisfaction and, ultimately, profits.

imPlement faster. sell more. grow.

In this solutions guide, you’ll read why the days of bulky spreadsheets and rigid enterprise systems for pricing, quoting, and selling products are passé, and that none of those systems provide intuitive online selling tools or support for complex B2B Multichannel Commerce. It also discusses how B2B customers are increasingly demanding that their vendors deliver a B2C-class user experience across channels, and why modern B2B Multichannel Com-merce solutions are essential.

state of B2B e-commerce

This thought leadership guide offers insights into the preferences of today’s procurement professionals or business professionals who buy products on behalf of their compa-ny. It offers strategic guidance on the required commerce technology capabilities and potential operations improvements that emerge from these insights.

e-commerce challenges facing the wholesale industry

This paper discusses the most common challenges that wholesa-lers face when leveraging modern e-commerce technologies to acce-lerate sales growth. It also provides suggestions to help make the tran-sition to an effective business model that adequately supports traditional, online, and mobile commerce ope-rations.

the consumerization of the B2B channel

Driven by a range of customer, cost, and market factors, the “Consu-merization Effect” is already taking place in B2B channels. This paper evaluates the opportunities that this evolution offers to all B2B organiza-tions, including the following:

Reducing costs by stream- lining business operations

Increasing customer satisfac-tion by delivering omni-chan-nel convenience

Managing the complexity of B2B transactions

1

2

3

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key questions to include in an e-commerce Plat-form rfP

This paper describes how a compre-hensive RFP that thoroughly covers all the critical points can assist com-panies in reducing costs and pro-ducing better ROI, faster. If an RFP helps a management team reach a final decision in 12 weeks rather than 16 weeks, an additional month of revenue may be added to the bottom line from the e-commerce channel. This could translate into hundreds of thousands of additional revenue dollars. And a well-crafted RFP can ensure that a company doesn’t pay a premium for features it won’t need in the foreseeable future.

saP hyBris ProJect Best Practices guide

This extensive document provi-des SAP Hybris customers with a summary of commerce project best practices collected by the SAP Hybris team responsible for project delivery. It presents a set of activities that an implementation team should consider during an SAP Hybris com-merce project implementation. This includes discussions of development methodology, team structures, and communication style; guidelines for building a project approach, staffing model and timeline to match specific requirements; plus answers to many architectural, design and technical questions.

to download these white PaPers and solution Briefs Please Visit www.hyBris.com/downloads

SaP hYBriS SerVeS oVer 500 customers, including Some of the moSt recog-nized comPanieS in the World (glo-Bal B2B BrandS aS Well aS conSumer BrandS).

We are BY far the faSteSt-groWing maJor commerce Platform comPanY – our comPound annual growth rate Sin-ce 2009 iS 83%.

83%

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B2B case study

rexel

Rexel, a global leader in the dis-tribution of electrical supplies and services, serves three main end markets: industrial, commercial, and residential. Newey and Eyre is the UK’s leading distributor of qua-lity electrical and safety products, operating under Rexel UK Limited. The company is renowned for its highly personalized counter service.

Newey and Eyre recognized a need to offer an effective alternative to traditional, in-branch trading. A multi-channel B2B e-commerce platform would allow customers to order supplies from its massive pro-duct range outside normal working hours, meaning they could spend less time traveling to their local branch, and more time on the job.

The company chose to develop a groundbreaking, functionally-rich ‘one stop shop’ that that would pro-vide the electrical wholesale mar-ket with a Web channel that offered best-of-breed search and navigati-on, with the same Web capabilities offered to general consumers in the retail sector.

Flexibility, scalability, and easy integration with existing workflows and systems were the key criteria behind the selection of SAP Hybris Commerce as the platform at the heart of Newey and Eyre’s new ‘one stop shop.’ It offered out-of-the-box functionality that met the needs of the business, including the ability to support searchandising, SEO visibility and usability.

SAP Hybris’ B2B case study on Rexel illustrates how they were able to increase average order value and help customers via a self-service portal.

The fact that SAP Hybris could offer a combined e-commerce and pro-duct content management (PCM) platform was considered vital for the long-term management of pro-duct data. Newey and Eyre worked with a SAP Hybris partner that specialized in e-commerce consul-tancy and systems integration for the implementation. After four months, the new platform laun-ched, offering customers the first truly multi-channel B2B experience in the electrical wholesale market.

read more details at: www.hyBris.com/downloads/ case-study/rexel/009

reference customers

1 million products; 3,000 sup-pliers; 2 million customers; 500,000 orders / day; $2B online sales

200 private label e-Shops Mul-ti-catalog, complex pricing. Major version upgrade: 15 Days.

World’s largest tire company uses SAP Hybris to support 2,000 dea-lers for commerce & MDM, B2B & B2B2C

World s # 3 food service provider, # 2 uniform supplier with $13B in worldwide sales. Uses SAP Hybris to enable 100k customers,

System of record for product content 20,000 daily users and 300 editors

5 languages, 4 currencies, 30M price rows

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aBout SaP hYBriS

SAP Hybris enables businesses to transform how they engage with customers, innovate how they do business, and simplify their technology landscape. With a comprehensive approach to customer engagement and commerce, our solutions unlock opportunities to optimize your customers’ experience and transform your business. We help you drive relevant, contex-tual experiences across all of your customer touch-points in real-time, so that you can cre-ate strong differentiation and build competitive advantage in the Digital Economy.

SAP Hybris has helped some of the world’s leading organizations transform themselves in response to changing market conditions and customer expectations – delivering exceptional experiences, adding new channels, evolving their business models, and entering new mar-kets. How can we help you?

Explore SAP Hybris solutions today.

SAP Hybris is the fastest-growing major commerce platform company with a compound annual growth rate since 2009 of ~83%.

for more information, Visit www.hyBris.com

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notes notes

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notes

The content of this Hybris customer resource guide is highly confiden-tial, and the conditions of the confidentiality agreement strictly apply. This guide is for informational purposes only and must not be disclosed to anyone and/or forwarded or copied in any way or form. This document and the information contained in this guide may be subject to change, updates, revisions, verifications, and further amendments by Hybris at any time, without notice. While the information contained in this guide has been prepared in good faith, neither Hybris nor its shareholders, di-rectors, officers, agents, employees, or advisers give, has given, or has authority to give, any representations or warranties (express or implied) as to, or in relation to, the accuracy, reliability or completeness of the information in this paper, or any revisions thereof, (all such information being referred to as “information”) and liability therefore is expressly

disclaimed. Accordingly, neither Hybris nor any of its shareholders, directors, officers, agents, employees, or advisers take any responsibili-ty for, or will accept any liability whether direct, express or implied, cont-ractual, tortious, statutory or otherwise, in respect of the accuracy or completeness of the information or for any of the opinions contained in it, or for any errors, omissions or misstatements or for any loss, howsoe-ver arising from the use of this guide. In furnishing this guide, each of Hybris and its advisers does not undertake or agree to any obligation to provide the recipient with access to any additional information or to update this guide or to correct any inaccuracies in it, or omissions from, this guide which may become apparent.

contact hybris: www.hybris.com | [email protected]

diSclaimer

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www.hybris.com

© 2016 Hybris GmbH. All rights reserved.

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B2B e-commerce PLAYBOOK AND reSource guideB · tive, state-of-the-art business customer experiences that maximize your conversion rates and gross revenues. As your company progresses