The B2B wholesale distribution industry is weathering a quick shift in customer expectations. As technology progresses to meet the needs of an on-demand economy, the customers of B2B wholesale distribution are hoping to receive the same degree of service they receive with B2C businesses. It’s quite possible that businesses that don’t do well in terms of effectiveness, sales assistance, and customer experiences risk the loss of customers and drop in revenue.
The customer service angle of developing and being at the helm of a successful distributor business is as much an opportunity as a challenge. A purchase experience that indicates elaborate specifications, configuration, and visualization of the complicated, greatly customized products is what customers expect today.
We recommend that the distributors to take a detour from strategies that focus on organizational factors that could boost just operational efficiency. Moving in the direction of models that place greater importance on external parameters, including customer satisfaction, and eventually into more market-sensitive models spurred by sound decision-making is what should follow next.
Put in another way, if you are in the wholesale distribution industry, it certainly doesn’t mean there is any way for you to avoid the hard truths involved in operating a business. Distributors also need to adopt technologies to encourage successful survival in any vastly active marketplace.
Investing in a strong CPQ solution will offer multiple benefits for wholesale distributors without any delay. In combination with other powerful technology platforms, including ecommerce or even CRM, CPQ can transform your distributor business into a robust instrument for marketing and selling. In addition to providing the consumer with a highly augmented purchase experience, this wholesale distribution business can also amp up the value of the distributor to the manufacturer.
Some of the largest global wholesale distributors are winning over industry challenges by leveraging SAP CPQ’s cutting edge technology to achieve measurable business impact by:
Some of the most compelling accelerators that SAP CPQ offers wholesale distributors include:
Time to Quote: Enables Excel upload of RFQ requests with extensible product search model, ATP, Cost and Sourcing data views for product analysis and selection, RPA for RFQ email to quote conversion, and more
Quote Accuracy: Leverages rules to ensure accurate quotes and help you manage sourcing requirements and product selection and guarantees pricing accuracy with automated pricing models
Collaboration: Features easily configurable approvals and workflows tied to margin rules and enables access to quote revision history
Pricing and Margin Management: Makes available flexible and easily extensible pricing models, extensible models for customer specific pricing and floor pricing, and discount management by product and customer attributes
Value Added Services: Benefit from warranty addition, installation, and maintenance services and configurable services and solutions to product offering
CTO – Services & Products: Leverage custom-delivered offerings via subcontract services for packaging for consumer, sub-assembly manufacturing and adding configurable services and solutions to product offering
To help wholesale enterprises reach their full potential and gain access to newer markets by leveraging CPQ technology—particularly SAP CPQ, we will be hosting a live webinar on Aug 20, 2020, which will focus on the Top Priorities for Wholesale Distribution Business and Technology Leaders. Details follow in the coming sections of the newsletter. Should you or any of your customers be interested in being a part of this live online event, be sure to click on Register here.