How a B2B pharma enterprise expanded and evolved its customer base with e-commerce

    Intro

    Finding the best-fit commerce platform

    The B2B e-commerce market is fast-evolving. Manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers must navigate unique challenges to meet customer expectations, deliver a streamlined purchasing experience, build lasting relationships, adapt to disrupted supply chains and drive growth.

    These challenges compound for international enterprises that are fast expanding into new markets. They need to create multiple storefronts to deliver a localized customer experience while ensuring that all the product, pricing and stock availability data align with their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

    Here’s how an international pharmaceutical and biotech company implemented Sana’s B2B enterprise e-commerce solution to utilize their sales resources more cost-effectively and establish a solid online presence. See how it attracts new customers, streamlines operations and lowers the total cost of ownership (TCO).
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    The situation

    Unique requirements for international B2B sales

    While the company sells to many big distributors, it also has a long tail of small customers. It dedicated most of the sales power to service the large accounts and didn’t have the resources to build relationships with and maximize the value of its smaller customers. Moreover, it didn’t have any means to engage buyers online, even though customer engagement is one of its five main pillars.

    The company must shift toward digital and implement an e-commerce platform to serve its small and medium customers 24/7. But most e-commerce solutions available on the market aren’t tailored to meet the needs of enterprise B2B manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers that conduct business globally. For example, the company needed a cloud-based e-commerce platform that integrates seamlessly with its existing ERP, Microsoft Dynamics and cloud computing platform, Microsoft Azure, while offering the scalability and flexibility to support internationalization.
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    The solution

    Seamless integration for an outstanding customer experience

    The company implemented Sana Commerce to serve its small and medium customers. The platform allows these buyers to access all the information they need, including product information, pricing and stock availability, and place an order directly without contacting a sales rep.

    Sana provided a project team to help set up the e-commerce platform. Then, the business units followed the tutorials in Sana’s online university to activate the modules. Since the software comes with many preset options, few customizations were required to get it up and running.

    Thanks to Sana’s integration with Microsoft Dynamics, customers can see real-time information on product details, pricing, stock availability, specifications and documentation. The direct connection between the ERP and the storefronts delivers a seamless customer experience that drives conversions.

    Since the e-commerce platform doesn’t require additional third-party integrations, the company benefits from streamlined maintenance and troubleshooting. Meanwhile, teams have 100% confidence that all the information displayed on the web store reflects the data in the ERP to minimize costly errors and delays.

    The solution allows the pan-European company to standardize its sales process, pricing and stock management procedures. It bridges the ERP, the salespeople and the customer care teams to break down internal silos. The integration helps the company deliver a holistic customer experience and maintain customer relationships.

    Sana’s easy-to-use admin interface, online university and responsive customer support make it easy for business owners to perform various tasks without extensive IT involvement. Meanwhile, automation and integration reduce the risk of order errors that can lead to delays and impact the customer experience.

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    The results

    Expanded customer base and improved cost-efficiency

    Before implementing Sana, the customer care team had to make manual amendments to almost 80% of the orders before putting them into the fulfillment system. Sana’s solution eliminated the need to manually key in and manage orders, and the company saw a significant reduction in customer care time. The team can focus on building customer relationships, improving customer satisfaction and increasing customer retention. Today, Sana plays a key role in the company’s digital engagement pillar.

    The new e-commerce platform has also enabled the following:

    • Sales teams spend less time on small- and medium-sized businesses, since these customers can now place and manage their own orders
    • Sales representatives spend more time on large accounts, maximize sales productivity and revenues — without adding costs or resources
    • The company establish a more solid online presence that attracts new customers without increasing market investment

    Additionally, the company benefits from Sana’s simplicity and stability: The platform can be run by a team of four to five people. They only need one resource from IT occasionally to set up the software and the ERP when the company launches in new countries.

    Sana Commerce helps the company manage all the moving parts related to sales and customer care cost-effectively. The platform’s reliability and flexibility mean it can fit into the company’s existing structure for fast implementation and rapid user adoption. Moreover, the platform can scale up easily to support the company’s growth and evolve to adapt to changing market conditions. The company plans to expand its operations to 20 to 30 countries using Sana Commerce as the foundation of its digital presence.

    More about Sana Commerce: A B2B e-commerce platform for business expansion and evolution

    Sana Commerce offers a B2B e-commerce platform to help global enterprises deliver localized experiences that support multiple languages, currencies and customer experiences. Our scalable platform and ERP-integrated approach to e-commerce allow you to easily manage multiple e-commerce stores and ensure that they all display the most current and accurate information.

    Sana’s platform enables you to meet customer expectations through faster fulfillment, personalized shopping experiences and streamlined re-ordering. The technology is designed for stability and guarantees 99.9% uptime to support high order volumes. You can lower your TCO by eliminating unnecessary implementation and upgrade costs as you launch new online stores to shorten time to market and increase your return on investment.

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    Contact an enterprise e-commerce expert today to see if Sana Commerce is the right fit for your company.