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The Journey to B2B eCommerce
The end results of your efforts to achieve your goals are important, and the journey to that goal is just as important. In this month’s eSession, our featured guest was Michael Amaladhas, Chief Information officer at Scosche. He came on to tell us more about their digital transformation into B2B. Along with the improvements in quality assurance and accessibility that DCKAP implemented, Scosche has been forging a business to business path and reaching a new level of success in their ecommerce journey. 
Scosche is an award-winning company of consumer technology and electronics, car, truck, motorcycle audio installation products and accessories. They have been in the industry for almost 41 years, having launched the company in 1980. During that time, they have thrived as a direct to consumer brand. As Michael explains, the team at Scosche did not necessarily have B2B on their radar when their journey first started. It took hearing the feedback from some central customers to point out the need to implement something. “Back in 2019, when we went to a conference, we met a lot of our customers from a small customer group. They mentioned that they could do more business with us if we had an online portal.”“At that point, we were getting all the PPOs and the purchase orders through emails and phone calls. So someone has to manually enter that into the ERP system for the fulfillment part,” he tells us. This inspired the beginnings of their thought process on how to sell better to these customers.They were also migrating from M1 to M2 at that point, and right after launching, they began to implement a dealer portal for that particular customer group. It was launched just over six months ago, and they have been working on moving their customers over to the portal since. 
Digital Transformation: Learning Through Customers
“We spent a lot of time talking with our customers and wanted to learn from them,” Michael says. “Before we finalized the features and also the user experience, we wanted to spend time with customers and understand their needs.”Within these needs, the search functionality was pivotal, for the customers to have the ability to find and purchase products quickly. In addition, the product catalog being up to date and in real time, product availability based on location, reliable shipment tracking, and text notification, are also central in meeting these customers’ needs.
“Even though this is a B2B site, they wanted to have a kind of B2C experience.” – Michael Amaladhas
Chatting with customer support was also very important to complete the customer experience, as well as offering bulk discounts, which has been built into the checkout process. With a quick order widget, customers also have the option to repeat quick orders. These are some of the things they enabled when launching their site to help cater to all those needs they researched, and the results speak loudly for the short time it has been implemented.
“1 in 3 customers are now using the portal,” Michael explains. “We are seeing a high volume of orders coming in, in the last 2-3 months since the launch.” They are seeing double the amount of sales, and they have also been obtaining 20% of all orders through the new customer portal. With optimizing sales being a central focus, this helped their success.
“We wanted to put the power back to the sales team.” – Michael Amaladhas
The final piece of the puzzle for Scosche was to empower their sales team and enable them to manage their business. One of the tools implemented for their team is a dashboard with up to date information on buying trends. They give them the ability to leverage all available tools and resources to improve the process from inquiry to purchase. With the improvements that DCKAP has helped with in quality assurance and accessibility on their website overall, the benefits are many and the trajectory is high. Now, Scosche is on the path to generating even greater growth by meeting these new business needs. What they’ve learned is that online sales is quickly becoming the norm in B2B, shoppers are looking for the same B2C experience, and sales teams are excited to pursue these new avenues. The end goal is to enhance their relationship with online business customers looking for better options to buy, and a great customer experience makes a great buying experience every time.
You can watch the full presentation here:
If you’d like to read highlights or watch any of the speakers from last year’s DCKAP eSummit event, you can visit our post event recap blog, and you can watch the full event playlist here. Next up will be the DCKAP eSummit 2021. Join us then to hear from some amazing speakers and guests, learn even more and find the best ways to start or grow your success in B2B eCommerce!
