7 Signs your ecommerce platform is holding back growth

An ecommerce platform doesn't have to be broken to be holding your business back.

For manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers and other B2B businesses, the warning signs rarely start with website performance. They appear in daily operations: customer service teams re-keying orders, salespeople processing routine purchases, customer-specific pricing that's difficult to manage online, or straightforward commercial ideas becoming complex technology projects.

Over time, the business starts adapting the way it works to accommodate the limitations of its ecommerce platform.

It should be the other way round.

If several of the following sound familiar, your ecommerce platform may no longer be supporting the way your business needs to compete.

1. Your business has become more sophisticated than your platform

Growth usually brings complexity.

Different customers may need different products, prices, discounts, payment terms or delivery options. Account structures become more complicated. Buyers may need budgets, approval processes or purchasing controls. New divisions, brands, territories or business models appear.

These aren't unusual requirements in B2B commerce. They are part of how many businesses trade.

Problems arise when the ecommerce platform cannot represent them without significant bespoke development, plugins or manual intervention.

Signs to look for:

• Customer-specific pricing or product ranges are difficult to manage
• Account structures and purchasing rules cannot be represented properly
• Normal commercial changes require development
• Workarounds are steadily accumulating
• Apparently simple requirements become expensive projects

Your ecommerce platform should adapt to how your business competes, rather than forcing the business into a simpler model.

2. Ecommerce doesn't fit properly into the rest of your business

For a complex B2B business, ecommerce doesn't operate in isolation.

Pricing may originate in the ERP. Product information may come from a PIM. Customer and account information may exist in CRM or ERP. Stock, credit, orders, fulfilment and other operational information may depend on several systems.

The issue therefore isn't simply whether your website can “integrate with the ERP”.

It is whether ecommerce is properly connected to the systems and processes that actually run your business.

Signs to look for:

• Orders are re-keyed into another system
• Customer or product information is maintained in several places
• Online stock or availability can't be trusted
• Customer-specific pricing is difficult to expose online
• Integrations fail or require regular intervention
• Different systems provide conflicting information

Good integration removes work. Poor integration simply moves it somewhere else.

3. Ecommerce growth creates more work rather than less

More online revenue is good.

More administration for every additional online order isn't.

One of the benefits of B2B ecommerce should be removing repetitive work from sales, customer service and operations while giving customers greater control over routine purchasing.

If digital growth means employing more people simply to keep the process moving, something is wrong.

Signs to look for:

• Orders regularly require manual intervention
• Customer service teams re-key emailed orders
• Staff manually check stock, pricing or delivery availability
• Contract pricing discrepancies require correction
• Salespeople spend time processing repeat purchases
• Administration grows broadly in line with order volume

The aim isn't simply to put more transactions online. It is to make the whole business easier to operate as it grows.

4. Your customers can buy online, but many don't want to

This is particularly important in B2B.

Customers may already have established relationships with account managers and customer service teams. Orders can be large, technical or repetitive. Buyers may work from product codes, previous orders, purchasing lists or procurement systems rather than browsing a conventional online catalogue. Many aren't trying to "shop". They're trying to quickly reorder products they've purchased dozens or hundreds of times before.

So low ecommerce adoption shouldn't automatically be dismissed as:

“Our customers prefer ordering by phone.”

The better question is:

Why is calling or emailing still easier than buying online?

A good B2B ecommerce experience can complement existing sales relationships while making routine purchasing substantially easier.

Depending on the customer, that might mean:

• Customer-specific products and pricing
• Rapid ordering by SKU or product code
• Saved lists and repeat ordering
• Account users, roles, budgets and approvals
• Order history and account self-service
• Integration with procurement processes

Digital doesn't have to replace the account manager. It should remove unnecessary friction for the customer and unnecessary administration for your team.

5. Growth initiatives keep turning into technology projects

You want to launch another territory.
Add another brand.
Introduce a different pricing model.
Sell through dealers and direct customers simultaneously.
Give key accounts a different purchasing experience.
Create a specialist B2B customer portal.
Serve a new customer group.
Introduce a different commercial model.

But instead of asking “Is this commercially worthwhile?”, the conversation immediately becomes:

“Can our ecommerce platform actually do it?”

That's a warning sign.

Technology should give the business more options, not discourage it from pursuing them.

If expansion continually requires duplicated platforms, major redevelopment or another collection of workarounds, the problem isn't simply inconvenience. It can start affecting the commercial decisions the business is prepared to make.

6. You have data, but not enough useful insight

Most established ecommerce businesses aren't short of data.

The problem is getting useful answers from it.

When ecommerce, customers, products and operational information are fragmented across different systems, understanding what customers are doing and where opportunities are being lost becomes unnecessarily difficult.

That can make quite straightforward questions hard to answer:

• Which customers still place most orders by email or phone?
• Which accounts are increasing online purchasing?
• Which products generate the most customer service intervention?
• What are customers searching for but not finding?
• Which processes still require manual handling?

Better ecommerce isn't only about processing orders. It should also help you understand and improve the way customers buy.

Individually, each issue can seem minor. A manual process here. A spreadsheet there. An integration workaround somewhere else. The problem is that they accumulate, increasing cost, reducing agility and limiting the organisation's ability to change.

7. Your technology is starting to dictate how you compete

This is perhaps the biggest warning sign of all.

Individual platform limitations can be tolerated for years. A workaround here. A spreadsheet there. Another plugin. Another manual process. Another idea postponed because it's too difficult to implement.

Eventually those compromises add up.

You may find yourself asking:

• Can our platform support what we want to do?
• Why does every change take so long?
• Why are we maintaining so many workarounds?
• Could customers do more for themselves?
• Are our integrations becoming a constraint?
• Are we spending money maintaining limitations rather than improving the customer experience?

At that point, the real question isn't whether the platform still works.

It is:

Is it helping the business compete?

Don't wait for the platform to fail

Replatforming decisions rarely start because an ecommerce website suddenly stops functioning.

More often, the economic case develops gradually.

Manual processes consume more time. Integrations become harder to maintain. Development budgets are increasingly spent working around limitations. Customers don't adopt digital channels as readily as expected. Commercial ideas take too long to implement.

Individually, each problem may seem manageable.

Together, they can become a significant constraint on growth.

That is why the right time to assess your ecommerce platform is before it becomes an emergency.

And the assessment shouldn't begin with a feature comparison.

Start with the business:

• How do your customers actually buy?
• What makes your commercial model different?
• Where is unnecessary manual work being created?
• Which systems need to work together?
• What would you like to change that technology currently makes difficult?
• Where could a better digital experience give you a competitive advantage?

Then assess the technology against those requirements.

Complex commerce needs more than an ecommerce platform

For manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers and other businesses with complex B2B requirements, the answer is rarely another standard website with more plugins.

The commerce platform has to work around the realities of the business: its customers, products, pricing, account structures, processes and underlying systems.

And implementation is only part of the equation. The platform needs to keep evolving as the business evolves.

Businesses rarely outgrow ecommerce. They outgrow the assumptions their ecommerce platform was built around. 

The most expensive platform limitation is rarely the one you can see. It's the opportunity the business never pursues because the technology makes it too difficult.

That's the thinking behind Red.

Commerce built around your business.

Red combines ecommerce technology, integration, implementation, cloud hosting, security, support and ongoing development, helping businesses remove manual work, connect critical systems and create customer experiences that reflect how they actually trade.

Because the objective isn't simply to replace an ecommerce platform or undertake an ecommerce migration project.

It's to give the business greater freedom to compete differently.

Is your ecommerce platform helping your business grow, or are you increasingly working around it?

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