July 29, 2025 • 34 mins
Struggling to navigate the complexities of B2B eCommerce? This episode of The eCommerce Blueprint features Folio3 and BigCommerce experts who share their insights on building a successful online strategy. Discover how to overcome common challenges and unlock the potential of B2B sales with the right tools and techniques.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey, everyone.
(00:01):
Welcome back to the podcast here.
I'm Paul Dabrowski from BigCommerce, in the role of B2B manager.
And today we're going to be diving into a real-world
digital transformation story that has it all.
Honestly, this is a company that's really cool.
I mean, a true and true B2B.
They're called Commercial Truck and Trailer Parts (CTTP).
(00:22):
And the Folio3 team is here to unpack this whole transformation story.
Honestly, like I said, it's got it all.
It's a traditional business.
It's got complex systems.
There's ERP integrations, they got custom pricing,
and there's a team of experts who made that all come together.
Right.
So joining me from Folio3's
(00:42):
team, in the studio, there are three folks who are going to unpack the story.
I'm going to let them go ahead and introduce themselves,
and then we'll get into the rest of the segment.
So totally up to you guys.
I'm Brandon Rimmey, I'm the
director of e-commerce growth and scale over here.
My goal is to really do that, make sure that we're making the right,
(01:05):
not just technical decisions for your business,
but making sure that we have the right long term goal to be successful.
And I'll pass to my colleagues here.
Hi, it's Noman bin Rizwan, engineering manager, solution architect,
at Folio3.
My goal is to understand customer requirements
and pitch them the right solution and head the e-commerce development team
(01:26):
here for end to end execution lifecycle.
Okay. Hi.
So this is Azeem, and I'm really looking after
e-commerce marketing strategies here at Folio3.
And I'm really focusing on both B2C, B2B and
D2C clients, their use cases, and customer bases.
(01:47):
So really my focus is to pretty much
help
position Folio3 and its partners as an end to end
e-commerce solution provider.
Perfect. Thanks for the intro, you guys.
So this is a real world class team of experts that's helped
a real business through getting, you know, themselves online.
(02:11):
They partnered with CTTP.
Really great company and automotive spare parts supplier.
Right.
And this commercial space and they help them build their first ever online store.
And they did that on BigCommerce B2B edition.
So I thought it'd be cool if we just rewound a bit
and we start at the beginning of this journey, with this team.
(02:33):
So I'd like to go back to the moment, you guys, when CTTP
first came to you, you know, they had no e-commerce presence.
What was the conversation like?
What made them raise their hand and say, hey, it's time to go digital
Yeah, I'm happy to jump in on that one.
(02:54):
Our main point of contact, his name is Jaimin.
And I got to tell you, this guy came, as you know, as prepared
as he can, to evaluation like this.
Coming from a background
of a company that's looking to, you know, scale by acquiring,
you know, multiple companies and really tying them together.
(03:17):
One of the main thought processes, you know, how do we put a system in place
that, you know, helps us go live with this new acquisition,
really establish
a baseline, not just front end systems, but back end systems for financials.
And then have a platform on the front end that's able to
start to, you know, knock out some features and functionality
(03:39):
that are expected of some of the larger, you know, peers in the industry.
So coming to the
evaluation with some pretty clear requirements of saying, hey, you know,
the website we have right now is kind of like a back end portal.
There's really not a lot of functionality there.
Everything's on the phone.
It's all kind of siloed into, you know, a couple guys, heads, if you will.
(04:02):
And how do we digitize that?
And how do we kind of build, you know, confidence and scale for our customers?
So, we had a, you know, a great kind of, you know, requirements session.
Being on the nerdy side, really, you know, understanding how
to choose a platform that's able to, you know, have the immediate need
(04:23):
of going into this digital transformation, you know, as quick as possible,
but with respect to what future growth looks like when they bring in
additional locations, additional, you know, retail storefronts,
and kind of all of those complexities that need to come together
when kind of like the current state of the state is,
not a lot, you know, not a lot.
(04:45):
There on the canvas.
Yeah.
Awesome.
So, I gotta ask, you know, for the audience,
what were the big business goals they laid out?
You know, was this all about growing revenue for them?
Was it reaching new customers?
Was it improving the internal operations or all the above, you guys?
Yeah.
The short answer is all the above, but I'd say some of the major themes were,
(05:09):
how do we
build confidence within our customers,
that we have the, you know, the product information on our own manufactured parts
or on the parts that we bring in from our distributors.
And then how do we, you know, communicate
quickly with our B2B clients so we can get it to them quickly?
Where is it going to be?
(05:30):
And then also, you know, with it
being in the kind of automotive vertical, there's always fitment data
and other complexities and making sure we're getting the right product as well.
So overall growing revenue, building customer
confidence and scaling, are the three major themes.
But it was definitely more of like a Cadillac approach of getting everything
(05:52):
that we can under the hood and that in that first launch.
Yeah.
And I know you guys delivered on that.
It's a great case study, honestly.
So maybe for the other teammates from Folio3 on,
you know, can we look at the customer point of view for a second?
Right. So thinking as a customer,
and a
UX point of view, what were they hoping to improve?
(06:15):
You know, what pain points
were they hearing from their buyers that the new site needed to fix?
And how did BigCommerce help, you know, check those boxes because
Right.
The company was on NetSuite, you know.
Right. Not why not use NetSuite Commerce. Right.
Commerce. Right.
And get going with that and, you know, so what,
(06:36):
can you unpack that for us from a customer point of view?
Okay.
So, initially from
a marketing perspective, from a digital presence perspective,
they didn't really have an end to end B2B store.
So, I mean, this is a problem
that many B2B e-commerce brands face,
(06:57):
regardless of their reputation over the past few decades.
So, for example, if they don't really have a proper store,
so they really have sales reps who have their catalogs
and are running towards a potential prospects.
But at the end of the day, they don't really have digital brand and
digital presence to really build that trust.
(07:20):
So that's why first of all, we had to build an end to end store for them.
And other than that, they were currently on NetSuite,
so they really needed a platform that offers more features,
that offers more flexibility that's much more
scale friendly for a much lower cost.
(07:40):
So that's what BigCommerce really offered to CTTP.
Perfect.
Yeah.
And are there any real world examples from the buyer side that you guys
might be able to tell the audience, you know, like after this launch,
you know, for the buyers, did they adopt it immediately?
(08:02):
Right.
Did they have, you know, how did they get buyer adoption once they
they went live with this to
I mean, adoption is
adoption is pretty much a gradual process. But,
after they integrated some tools, some features, some self-service
features, some customer specific pricing and other
(08:23):
B2B commerce specific features.
They have seen a much better
approach to sales ratio.
And overall,
they have seen a much better and
much more improved revenue cycles.
So other than that, Noman will
take over from here.
(08:44):
Yeah, definitely.
So, yeah, just to add that, like, the question that you were asking Paul
that like, the main benefit that they were targeting before
going directly to buyer the they wanted to make their operation seamless.
That was like becoming like they were, the, they recently went
live in their through ERP.
Now they wanted to make the e-commerce operations also seamless,
(09:07):
specifically with respect to their B2B customers first.
So first they did the B2B launch and they already have onboarded
a few customer members on their B2B store and ERP as well.
And they are like purchasing from them.
And now they are thinking on on more features.
What want to bring and what that B2B customers are like trying to achieve.
(09:29):
Initially when they started, their main target was in order
to like searching because if you talk about automotive industry,
we have to like think of the search feature first. Why?
Because obviously if you talk about this,
they basically deal in truck specific spare parts.
So, you have like, that one
specific part can be named different cross references.
(09:53):
So, if
your search is getting triggered on different cross references.
So yeah, your product is getting closer to closer, for that customer.
So this is what, like these are the features that they targeted
and now they are getting good traction on the B2B buyer, B2B
or buyer portal specifically.
Now, then in the next phase they will be going towards the B2C phase as well.
(10:17):
So they will be launching for B2C customers as well very soon.
So yeah.
That's, that's their initial result, that they got.
Fantastic! All right. So we got customer segmentation.
We've got the e-commerce solution in place, integrated with
NetSuite ERP.
We always get asked, you know, why not
(10:37):
choose the native, you know, commerce solution.
Right.
And you guys actually have solved that
really clearly with an integration with the e-commerce for them.
So so all right, now I think let's get into the meat of it then.
Right.
CTTP they looked at Magento 2, right.
And BigCommerce when they were evaluating e-commerce platforms for this integration.
(10:58):
And that's a common fork in the road, honestly.
So why did they end up going with BigCommerce
and what was his role in guiding that decision?
Very good question.
And that was an interesting prospect that we face up till now
because, they were like, they were kind of a bit confused in both platforms.
(11:20):
They were like, we like feature A of Adobe Commerce.
We like feature B of BigCommerce.
So, what would be the right path to go
with for, what we did as an agency?
We list on their features, we listened to their requirements.
We gave them a comparison chart that this is what you can achieve
out of the box in Adobe Commerce.
(11:41):
This is what you can achieve
out of the box in BigCommerce using BigCommerce B2B edition.
And now, what value like which platform is adding more value
to it,
like the feature because we can have like many features,
but which feature is adding more value to it?
What problem you are trying to solve, are those features solving that problem?
So that was the question that was answered in that comparison chart.
(12:03):
So, like we didn't convince
for a specific platform, we help them in choosing one.
That's our role as an agency that we try to like, listen to the problem.
And now, like, this is how we can solve solution in one platform, and this is how
we can have some solution in this platform now where we,
what's the best, like, platform in terms of value?
(12:25):
So yeah, that is why they choose BigCommerce.
And to be honest, the features that turned out for
BigCommerce, especially the invoice pay later
option, like, that's the feature that none of the e-commerce platforms have yet.
Like, for example, if someone has like being, specifically for B2B customer,
they, like, all the platform support net terms and of like payment method.
(12:48):
But now you have to collect the payment.
You should have a mechanism online to collect those payments.
Through some integrated payment gateways
Here's where BigCommerce takes the lead on like did that
is the, the invoice portal that, that is in B2B edition.
That was solving this issue,
although there were some more other features that also,
(13:10):
help them incline towards BigCommerce.
But yeah, that's for them, among the major ones though.
Perfect. Yeah.
Maybe you in fact a lot of challenges and the solutions you guys were able to
to solve with. That's perfect.
So speaking on the ERP integration side,
you also had your NetSuite connector ready to go, right?
How important was that in the project scope
(13:31):
and how did it speed up or simplify the build?
Yep. So, the Folio3,
NetSuite-BigCommerce connector integration,
the built in solution that we have, like, we have, the,
the support for B2B addition as well in that particular product.
So the default flows of either we talk about quoting or they,
(13:54):
we talk about invoicing or ordering that all are pretty much supported in
Our standard connector from NetSuite to be BigCommerce.
But when we talk about some of the customization.
So if we talk about it specifically for the CTTP case,
they had some customization,
like for example, they were using NetSuite contract pricing.
Because for B2B customers, some of the customers,
(14:15):
you want some special kind of pricing
on top of the price level that you have in NetSuite. So,
so how should we solve that in terms of integration?
So the BigCommerce platform was giving the option of priceless.
So, we did this, like customization in our connector,
like picking the contract pricing from ERP,
(14:37):
adding the, the separate segregation in the middle way
and creating separate price list for BigCommerce for those specific B2B companies.
So this is how it was done, so, to come on your first question that.
Yeah, our built in connector did solve, the major problem.
But yeah, if we need some, any customization.
So we have a connector that is open to be customized specific to their business needs.
(14:59):
So we did that in this particular and CTTP project as well.
Part of it. Yeah. We see that a lot.
Oh go ahead.
Yeah, Noman
So that I'd like to add to
that is kind of like the perspective from Folio3 of our connector.
Between NetSuite, and BigCommerce or in our other solutions
between Business Central and BigCommerce.
(15:19):
Our goal is for the connector to feel invisible. Right.
We should just have a system that works between the two,
have it built to be essentially like a one trick pony
that has feature parity with B2B functionality,
but have the ability to customize, you know, 5, 10% where it makes sense
for the business cases but not have it also be, you know, some kind of,
(15:40):
you know, technical debt as a part of it, which, some of,
the other solutions out there could really,
you know, have a lot of full additional features,
but they can kind of balloon out of control and really slow down
the ultimate goal that you're looking for.
So that's definitely a focus.
And, you know, a theme of, of keeping it very lightweight
and kind of invisible in the background and have it just, you know,
(16:02):
work essentially.
Okay.
Thanks.
So that's, really good scope, I think, so far for everyone.
But, maybe let's go deeper into that pricing conversation.
And talk about pricing for a second. So,
how I understood it.
CTTP have different pricing levels for different buyers.
(16:25):
It's common.
And it was all managed in NetSuite before.
Right?
Honestly, that's a tough one for most of commerce
platform track.
What was your solution in the Commerce then?
Yeah.
So like they have like another layer on top of that particular pricing.
Like for example,
(16:45):
as you mentioned, that's specifically like that's perfectly
right that like all the B2B customers do have different
pricing for different companies within ERP.
It doesn't matter if it is NetSuite,
if it is Microsoft Dynamics Business Central or any other ERP.
They do have like different pricing for different companies.
Now bringing on those price levels to become it, become it does have
(17:06):
the functionality of price list to like point that company to company pricing.
That is something that can be done.
But there was an additional demand that they were using.
There was an additional feature in ERP that they were using was contract
specific pricing that they were doing contract for specific items, for,
like specific customers, so that, contract specific pricing
(17:29):
was adding additional discount on a few items on top of that price level.
So you can say there was an additional layer,
that they, like, wanted to have.
So what did Folio3's solution do?
We utilized BigCommerce price list feature
because that feature, has like complete,
in-depth, you can say, implementation.
(17:52):
We do not want to add some another additional pricing layer.
We just wanted to use utilize the BigCommerce prices feature.
So what we did is that like we segregate those contract, specific pricing
for those specific items, we pull in the base price level
and we created a new price list for that specific company
so that using the native become as feature, we were able to,
(18:15):
integrate that specific contract pricing into BigCommerce
with a separate price list with a new price list for that specific company.
So that way it didn't hurt anything, on the performance part as well.
And also, yeah, there was a bit of, like interval,
like while syncing the data from, like, ERP to be common.
(18:35):
But yeah, they were fine with that because,
there were very few customer that they wanted to have that.
And in 15 minutes they can,
see the, the latest pricing on their e-commerce storefront.
So, yeah,
that is the solution that, like we, did for it specifically for them
because, yeah, there are many other B2B customers as well.
After doing this implementation for CTTP, we also received some more inquiries on
(18:58):
especially the customers
who are going to a big commercial, using the native price list feature.
They wanted to achieve this context specific pricing as well.
So, yeah, that was the solution that we did.
Good.
Yeah.
So let's talk about something that's I mean, not supported by default.
Right.
So as I understood it to CTTP,
(19:19):
required thinking of group items from naturally to BigCommerce.
Obviously functionality not supported by default, like I've said.
So when we talk about group items in NetSuite,
it's something that a lot of ERP heavy businesses deal with.
How did you ensure that complexity didn't
break the BigCommerce store?
(19:41):
Yeah.
Very good question.
So we pitched a couple of solutions to them, for that.
Like one is that using BigCommerce native Picklist feature,
although we just needed to have like minor tweaks in representing
that group product on the e-commerce piece, on the storefront piece.
But, yeah,
they were more likely to have, like, if we can add those in a group product.
(20:03):
What is group product like? Let's first discuss this.
Like in a group product, we have some additional component
on top of the base and parent product.
So for example, if you want to sync that from ERP to e-commerce.
So you have to like sync that additional component information as well.
So what like our integration did there, like,
their completely
(20:23):
fresh tools, group product and then additional component
sync those as a simple product within BigCommerce.
And on the product detail page, we list the details
of all those additional components that when the customer is going
to purchase that, what additional, pieces coming along, the main group product,
so they can have that information and the reflection
(20:44):
of those additional components in order, invoicing, etc., that we handled.
So, like, yeah.
So as I mentioned, there are a couple of ways
maybe we can do the picklist part, that can also handle that.
We just have to do minor tweaks on the product detail page for that.
But yeah, they were more comfortable on adding that as a simple individual
product.
So, our integration managed that bunch in the, like,
(21:07):
consolidate the, the additional components and sync it from ERP to e-commerce.
So, yeah, that's the solution, that we did.
You make it sound easy. It's a slick implementation. Really cool.
All right, so another tricky one.
Inventory across multiple locations.
How did you manage the real time
(21:27):
sync and display logic for customers?
Right.
So, let me first tell you
what support in the multi-location we got from e-commerce platform.
That should be the first question.
So, we have the complete backend system,
that is supporting Multi-location within BigCommerce.
(21:49):
And we do have the API support for, multi location within BigCommerce.
Yeah, just the, the frontend piece that we had to develop
the user experience that we had to develop utilizing those APIs.
So on their homepage and listing page, on the header,
they were like, I forget the competitor name
(22:10):
they were talking about,
but yeah, this was a competitor who was doing that, like on the,
top of the header, customer can select the store or the warehouse
and inventory, status for that particular store can be,
rendered on specific products on the complete listing
page, either we talk about for title page or any other listing page.
(22:30):
So, that the, the whole pages can be covered, with that dropdown,
whatever they will select, they will see the, the
the inventory status as per the selected location. So,
we actually,
use the BigCommerce built in APIs for fetching the locations,
populating that in the top down and then, like, fetching the,
(22:53):
the store latest stock status of that particular location
within that, like the product cart that we have on listing page.
And same goes for the product detail page as well
that we listed that information there as well.
So, yeah.
And obviously with the same manner we can do that on cart and checkout as well.
We can fetch in the location, drop down.
Customer can select where they are going to pick up.
(23:15):
So buy online.
Pick up in-store is kind of a common thing.
So, yeah, we just have to develop the user experience part
for the backend mechanism handler
One more thing here.0:23:25:14 - 00:23:29:05 If we talk about, again, going back to our NetSuite and e-commerce
connector, the product that we have.
So in order to reflect the latest inventory, our connector
was handling that piece and fetching and syncing the right
(23:38):
inventory to the right warehouse from ERP to e-commerce.
So, yeah, that is how we manage it.
You guys make it sound so easy.
But we do make it a little easier for businesses.
I understand too. That's cool.
All right.
So now, look, being an auto parts search is everything.
(23:58):
I think you actually said this earlier.
Noman, so what customizations or features did they need
to make product discovery easier?
Right.
So in search there were two questions.
First, in terms of performance,
should we look to some third party search?
That was the first question.
(24:18):
Second was that like, especially as you mentioned, that
in terms of automotive industry, we have to like,
manage the requirement that most of the automotive customers
have, like, for example, as I told earlier, that searching against
different cross references, that they have, like, for example,
that same cross references is being sold, by another manufacturer as well.
(24:42):
So customers should be able to search with all the different patterns,
of the cross-reference and the SKU itself.
Now, coming to the first part. So,
why should we go
to some third party search engine,
from become a default search engine?
So that question comes in and we bring in BigCommerce solution team as well there.
(25:03):
They also advise like for example, it depends on the Merf SKUs.
Obviously if you talk about 5 million, 10 million.
No, BigCommerce is fine.
If you talk about like somewhere around another like 50
million, 100 million products.
So yeah, maybe you
can look after some third party search engine that can give us additional support
if we need some kind of, significant performance.
(25:24):
Otherwise that can, like, be handled.
So, we got a checkmark here that.
No, we don't want to go there.
So, now coming to the second piece, that, like, how, we should handle that.
So that is something we do not have to do any customization
because there is a functionality in BigCommerce of assigning
search keywords against every product.
(25:45):
We have a field in BigCommerce where we can,
like add in as many as search keywords that we want to.
So what we with, like, get the data from ERP
of all the cross-references against that specific product, we, like,
consolidate the data and put it in the search keyword field for that product.
(26:05):
So, like BigCommerce search engine handle it automatically.
So yeah, it's like boom!
So we don't have to do anything specific to that.
So yeah. Okay. Cool.
So I one feature I know stood up
to this team, at CTTP, they wanted to restrict access
right to specific OEM catalogs based on customer type.
(26:29):
How did you tackle that?
Did you use customer groups or price list or something custom?
No.
We were actually thinking of maybe if you can go to some custom solution.
But yeah, there is another feature in BigCommerce.
Like we can assign categories to customer group.
So for example, we discussed this with CTTP team.
(26:52):
They were fine with that.
Like, segregating different products into different categories.
Like, for example, like why they need that, for automotive industry,
there are two types of spare parts for example OEM part.
By OEM we mean like original equipment manufacturer, like
There is the original part and then there are non-OEM products.
So, if we have some customer who is specifically searching
(27:16):
for OEM products, so they had to display OEM product to them.
They don't want to like go to search, like for example, if they are searching
any OEM SKY, they don't want to show both of these SKUs to them.
They just want to show the OEM SKUs. So what we did
is that we categorized those products into an OEM and Non OEM part.
And then like associate that is specific category to a specific customer group.
(27:40):
And like for example, we had two customer of the OEM and Non OEM.
So that like yeah, we just had to,
customize a bit the front end part, the menu navigation part.
Like for example, if, an OEM customer is logging in, they,
they should see the OEM specific categories.
If the other customers are logging in, they should see their relevant category.
(28:01):
So these are the customization that we had to manage.
And like CTTP team also like agrees
to put in all the data by themselves and segregate that into different categories.
So this is how like, we don't have to go much, into much advanced customization.
We had a little bit, a bit of customization
and, a bit of native feature that BigCommerce offers.
(28:25):
Yeah. Perfect.
I'm going to wrap up this section, too, by just,
looking
back, you know, what was the toughest technical challenge on this project?
You guys, what really tested the team?
To be honest, the pricing part,
because as I mentioned, that, like the additional pricing layer,
because, it's not like kind of that it was impacting the performance.
(28:49):
It was impacting anything.
But we had to like the main goal as an agency
was to, utilize the native features of both platform of ERP and e-commerce
without hurting any core feature of both platform
and specifically cover all the edge cases that we have.
So that was a big challenge that, like we both teams
(29:10):
sit in and integration team also played a good part there
in order to and will also bring in like, Adam Ward from BigCommerce.
Who is the solution architect there.
He also like, into the solution.
So, yeah, that was like kind of an end to end, discussion.
We all brainstormed there and we, came to a specific solution.
(29:31):
So, yeah, that is something I can say was a bit of challenging part of.
Definitely.
Well, this was a complex build, you guys, but one was huge pay off.
Right.
You know, commercial truck and trailer parts
went from no e-commerce to a full fledged B2B portal
integrated with NetSuite and optimized for their unique buyers.
(29:52):
I think the final question for the team, you know,
what advice would you give to other B2B businesses like CTTP, who are still sitting
on the sidelines, hesitant to make that leap?
I think,
the one was advice that we would really give is that online visibility
(30:14):
is really important for B2B commerce brands these days, and since
AI has come along, it's really important to build that trust factor,
towards your target audience.
So yeah, that's what I would really recommend
it's really important to not just have an end to end platform,
but also ensure that all of your tools, all of your systems, whether it's an ERP
(30:37):
or whether it's a CRM, whether it's any other tools,
they should really talk to each other.
They should really be very, well-integrated,
with each other and all customer data, product data, pricing and everything.
It should be synced smoothly and intelligently.
So yeah, that's what I that's what I would really recommend.
Yeah.
The way that I would answer that is there's
(31:00):
no better time than now to, to start that transformation.
Right.
Digital transformation has been a term for decades now.
But we need to realize from a B2B perspective that everyone in their home
life is used to the convenience of Amazon and other like, instantaneous purchasing.
We have buyers that are,
(31:20):
you know, making that buying decision once they've already done their own research.
So they don't necessarily need, you know, the human connection on the front end to,
sell you the product and, you know, talk to you about why you need a certain one.
They need the human connection to bond with your business.
Right.
And really,
you know,
have all of the additional value adds that the company brings to the product.
(31:42):
But if we're not put in our catalogs online and we're not,
you know, building out, the path where a customer can go through that,
you know, educational learning process and building
product, we're leaving money on the table
and we're completely missing out on that channel.
So if we
implement a solution like this one and like others that we've done,
(32:03):
the goal is to, you know, look at it as a new channel
that's adopted, you know, not as a sorry to rephrase that,
don't adopt B2B as another channel that has its own attribution.
Adopt it as a way, that is core to your company.
So it's another tool for sales reps, not a tool that conventional sales
reps are fighting against.
(32:23):
And then, you know, high tide rises all ships. Right.
And we see the ability to service your customers in a better way.
You know, give them the products.
That's, you know, in front of them.
Give them the ability to code and kind of get the information that that they need.
And from a business perspective, your sales reps are able to handle more,
(32:43):
and then from a customer's perspective,
they're still able to have that personal connection on the stuff
that matters and not the tedious stuff of passing spreadsheets back and forth.
So those are my thoughts.
Perfect.
Yeah, I guess I had my 2 cents, right.
What we see today is, B2B online
sales is outpacing offline sales by eight times.
(33:04):
And, from now to 2030, it looks like B2B
online sales, will hit about 40% globally.
Yeah, right.
40% of all sales.
And so offline sales are really looking stagnant to where you put your investment.
You know, if I put my CEO or CFO hat on boards and digital, right.
(33:25):
And then, you combine that with what's happening with, the buyer side.
Right?
B2B buyers are online more than ever before to discover
new suppliers, to order reorder, or to evaluate new suppliers.
And so,
90% of that buyer journey is already complete
before they even contact the company.
So you need to be in front of them and where to be in front of them.
(33:47):
Right.
We see a
shift in digital marketing right now
where traditional marketing, is actually,
switching from just SEO search to those chat systems.
And so we want to be prevalent wherever your buyers are.
And this is a team that can really help you.
So honestly, massive thanks to, our Folio3 team
(34:11):
for joining and sharing the behind the scenes, transformation story of CTTP.
I'm going to leave you with this.
If you're manufacturer, distributor or a parts supplier
thinking about going digital, you don't have to go, you know, at it
alone, right?
With the right platform and the right partner, it's possible.
So thanks.
(34:31):
You guys enjoyed this one.
Catch you on the next.
Hey, everyone.
(00:01):
Welcome back to the podcast here.
I'm Paul Dabrowski from BigCommerce, in the role of B2B manager.
And today we're going to be diving into a real-world
digital transformation story that has it all.
Honestly, this is a company that's really cool.
I mean, a true and true B2B.
They're called Commercial Truck and Trailer Parts (CTTP).
(00:22):
And the Folio3 team is here to unpack this whole transformation story.
Honestly, like I said, it's got it all.
It's a traditional business.
It's got complex systems.
There's ERP integrations, they got custom pricing,
and there's a team of experts who made that all come together.
Right.
So joining me from Folio3's
(00:42):
team, in the studio, there are three folks who are going to unpack the story.
I'm going to let them go ahead and introduce themselves,
and then we'll get into the rest of the segment.
So totally up to you guys.
I'm Brandon Rimmey, I'm the
director of e-commerce growth and scale over here.
My goal is to really do that, make sure that we're making the right,
(01:05):
not just technical decisions for your business,
but making sure that we have the right long term goal to be successful.
And I'll pass to my colleagues here.
Hi, it's Noman bin Rizwan, engineering manager, solution architect,
at Folio3.
My goal is to understand customer requirements
and pitch them the right solution and head the e-commerce development team
(01:26):
here for end to end execution lifecycle.
Okay. Hi.
So this is Azeem, and I'm really looking after
e-commerce marketing strategies here at Folio3.
And I'm really focusing on both B2C, B2B and
D2C clients, their use cases, and customer bases.
(01:47):
So really my focus is to pretty much
help
position Folio3 and its partners as an end to end
e-commerce solution provider.
Perfect. Thanks for the intro, you guys.
So this is a real world class team of experts that's helped
a real business through getting, you know, themselves online.
(02:11):
They partnered with CTTP.
Really great company and automotive spare parts supplier.
Right.
And this commercial space and they help them build their first ever online store.
And they did that on BigCommerce B2B edition.
So I thought it'd be cool if we just rewound a bit
and we start at the beginning of this journey, with this team.
(02:33):
So I'd like to go back to the moment, you guys, when CTTP
first came to you, you know, they had no e-commerce presence.
What was the conversation like?
What made them raise their hand and say, hey, it's time to go digital
Yeah, I'm happy to jump in on that one.
(02:54):
Our main point of contact, his name is Jaimin.
And I got to tell you, this guy came, as you know, as prepared
as he can, to evaluation like this.
Coming from a background
of a company that's looking to, you know, scale by acquiring,
you know, multiple companies and really tying them together.
(03:17):
One of the main thought processes, you know, how do we put a system in place
that, you know, helps us go live with this new acquisition,
really establish
a baseline, not just front end systems, but back end systems for financials.
And then have a platform on the front end that's able to
start to, you know, knock out some features and functionality
(03:39):
that are expected of some of the larger, you know, peers in the industry.
So coming to the
evaluation with some pretty clear requirements of saying, hey, you know,
the website we have right now is kind of like a back end portal.
There's really not a lot of functionality there.
Everything's on the phone.
It's all kind of siloed into, you know, a couple guys, heads, if you will.
(04:02):
And how do we digitize that?
And how do we kind of build, you know, confidence and scale for our customers?
So, we had a, you know, a great kind of, you know, requirements session.
Being on the nerdy side, really, you know, understanding how
to choose a platform that's able to, you know, have the immediate need
(04:23):
of going into this digital transformation, you know, as quick as possible,
but with respect to what future growth looks like when they bring in
additional locations, additional, you know, retail storefronts,
and kind of all of those complexities that need to come together
when kind of like the current state of the state is,
not a lot, you know, not a lot.
(04:45):
There on the canvas.
Yeah.
Awesome.
So, I gotta ask, you know, for the audience,
what were the big business goals they laid out?
You know, was this all about growing revenue for them?
Was it reaching new customers?
Was it improving the internal operations or all the above, you guys?
Yeah.
The short answer is all the above, but I'd say some of the major themes were,
(05:09):
how do we
build confidence within our customers,
that we have the, you know, the product information on our own manufactured parts
or on the parts that we bring in from our distributors.
And then how do we, you know, communicate
quickly with our B2B clients so we can get it to them quickly?
Where is it going to be?
(05:30):
And then also, you know, with it
being in the kind of automotive vertical, there's always fitment data
and other complexities and making sure we're getting the right product as well.
So overall growing revenue, building customer
confidence and scaling, are the three major themes.
But it was definitely more of like a Cadillac approach of getting everything
(05:52):
that we can under the hood and that in that first launch.
Yeah.
And I know you guys delivered on that.
It's a great case study, honestly.
So maybe for the other teammates from Folio3 on,
you know, can we look at the customer point of view for a second?
Right. So thinking as a customer,
and a
UX point of view, what were they hoping to improve?
(06:15):
You know, what pain points
were they hearing from their buyers that the new site needed to fix?
And how did BigCommerce help, you know, check those boxes because
Right.
The company was on NetSuite, you know.
Right. Not why not use NetSuite Commerce. Right.
Commerce. Right.
And get going with that and, you know, so what,
(06:36):
can you unpack that for us from a customer point of view?
Okay.
So, initially from
a marketing perspective, from a digital presence perspective,
they didn't really have an end to end B2B store.
So, I mean, this is a problem
that many B2B e-commerce brands face,
(06:57):
regardless of their reputation over the past few decades.
So, for example, if they don't really have a proper store,
so they really have sales reps who have their catalogs
and are running towards a potential prospects.
But at the end of the day, they don't really have digital brand and
digital presence to really build that trust.
(07:20):
So that's why first of all, we had to build an end to end store for them.
And other than that, they were currently on NetSuite,
so they really needed a platform that offers more features,
that offers more flexibility that's much more
scale friendly for a much lower cost.
(07:40):
So that's what BigCommerce really offered to CTTP.
Perfect.
Yeah.
And are there any real world examples from the buyer side that you guys
might be able to tell the audience, you know, like after this launch,
you know, for the buyers, did they adopt it immediately?
(08:02):
Right.
Did they have, you know, how did they get buyer adoption once they
they went live with this to
I mean, adoption is
adoption is pretty much a gradual process. But,
after they integrated some tools, some features, some self-service
features, some customer specific pricing and other
(08:23):
B2B commerce specific features.
They have seen a much better
approach to sales ratio.
And overall,
they have seen a much better and
much more improved revenue cycles.
So other than that, Noman will
take over from here.
(08:44):
Yeah, definitely.
So, yeah, just to add that, like, the question that you were asking Paul
that like, the main benefit that they were targeting before
going directly to buyer the they wanted to make their operation seamless.
That was like becoming like they were, the, they recently went
live in their through ERP.
Now they wanted to make the e-commerce operations also seamless,
(09:07):
specifically with respect to their B2B customers first.
So first they did the B2B launch and they already have onboarded
a few customer members on their B2B store and ERP as well.
And they are like purchasing from them.
And now they are thinking on on more features.
What want to bring and what that B2B customers are like trying to achieve.
(09:29):
Initially when they started, their main target was in order
to like searching because if you talk about automotive industry,
we have to like think of the search feature first. Why?
Because obviously if you talk about this,
they basically deal in truck specific spare parts.
So, you have like, that one
specific part can be named different cross references.
(09:53):
So, if
your search is getting triggered on different cross references.
So yeah, your product is getting closer to closer, for that customer.
So this is what, like these are the features that they targeted
and now they are getting good traction on the B2B buyer, B2B
or buyer portal specifically.
Now, then in the next phase they will be going towards the B2C phase as well.
(10:17):
So they will be launching for B2C customers as well very soon.
So yeah.
That's, that's their initial result, that they got.
Fantastic! All right. So we got customer segmentation.
We've got the e-commerce solution in place, integrated with
NetSuite ERP.
We always get asked, you know, why not
(10:37):
choose the native, you know, commerce solution.
Right.
And you guys actually have solved that
really clearly with an integration with the e-commerce for them.
So so all right, now I think let's get into the meat of it then.
Right.
CTTP they looked at Magento 2, right.
And BigCommerce when they were evaluating e-commerce platforms for this integration.
(10:58):
And that's a common fork in the road, honestly.
So why did they end up going with BigCommerce
and what was his role in guiding that decision?
Very good question.
And that was an interesting prospect that we face up till now
because, they were like, they were kind of a bit confused in both platforms.
(11:20):
They were like, we like feature A of Adobe Commerce.
We like feature B of BigCommerce.
So, what would be the right path to go
with for, what we did as an agency?
We list on their features, we listened to their requirements.
We gave them a comparison chart that this is what you can achieve
out of the box in Adobe Commerce.
(11:41):
This is what you can achieve
out of the box in BigCommerce using BigCommerce B2B edition.
And now, what value like which platform is adding more value
to it,
like the feature because we can have like many features,
but which feature is adding more value to it?
What problem you are trying to solve, are those features solving that problem?
So that was the question that was answered in that comparison chart.
(12:03):
So, like we didn't convince
for a specific platform, we help them in choosing one.
That's our role as an agency that we try to like, listen to the problem.
And now, like, this is how we can solve solution in one platform, and this is how
we can have some solution in this platform now where we,
what's the best, like, platform in terms of value?
(12:25):
So yeah, that is why they choose BigCommerce.
And to be honest, the features that turned out for
BigCommerce, especially the invoice pay later
option, like, that's the feature that none of the e-commerce platforms have yet.
Like, for example, if someone has like being, specifically for B2B customer,
they, like, all the platform support net terms and of like payment method.
(12:48):
But now you have to collect the payment.
You should have a mechanism online to collect those payments.
Through some integrated payment gateways
Here's where BigCommerce takes the lead on like did that
is the, the invoice portal that, that is in B2B edition.
That was solving this issue,
although there were some more other features that also,
(13:10):
help them incline towards BigCommerce.
But yeah, that's for them, among the major ones though.
Perfect. Yeah.
Maybe you in fact a lot of challenges and the solutions you guys were able to
to solve with. That's perfect.
So speaking on the ERP integration side,
you also had your NetSuite connector ready to go, right?
How important was that in the project scope
(13:31):
and how did it speed up or simplify the build?
Yep. So, the Folio3,
NetSuite-BigCommerce connector integration,
the built in solution that we have, like, we have, the,
the support for B2B addition as well in that particular product.
So the default flows of either we talk about quoting or they,
(13:54):
we talk about invoicing or ordering that all are pretty much supported in
Our standard connector from NetSuite to be BigCommerce.
But when we talk about some of the customization.
So if we talk about it specifically for the CTTP case,
they had some customization,
like for example, they were using NetSuite contract pricing.
Because for B2B customers, some of the customers,
(14:15):
you want some special kind of pricing
on top of the price level that you have in NetSuite. So,
so how should we solve that in terms of integration?
So the BigCommerce platform was giving the option of priceless.
So, we did this, like customization in our connector,
like picking the contract pricing from ERP,
(14:37):
adding the, the separate segregation in the middle way
and creating separate price list for BigCommerce for those specific B2B companies.
So this is how it was done, so, to come on your first question that.
Yeah, our built in connector did solve, the major problem.
But yeah, if we need some, any customization.
So we have a connector that is open to be customized specific to their business needs.
(14:59):
So we did that in this particular and CTTP project as well.
Part of it. Yeah. We see that a lot.
Oh go ahead.
Yeah, Noman
So that I'd like to add to
that is kind of like the perspective from Folio3 of our connector.
Between NetSuite, and BigCommerce or in our other solutions
between Business Central and BigCommerce.
(15:19):
Our goal is for the connector to feel invisible. Right.
We should just have a system that works between the two,
have it built to be essentially like a one trick pony
that has feature parity with B2B functionality,
but have the ability to customize, you know, 5, 10% where it makes sense
for the business cases but not have it also be, you know, some kind of,
(15:40):
you know, technical debt as a part of it, which, some of,
the other solutions out there could really,
you know, have a lot of full additional features,
but they can kind of balloon out of control and really slow down
the ultimate goal that you're looking for.
So that's definitely a focus.
And, you know, a theme of, of keeping it very lightweight
and kind of invisible in the background and have it just, you know,
(16:02):
work essentially.
Okay.
Thanks.
So that's, really good scope, I think, so far for everyone.
But, maybe let's go deeper into that pricing conversation.
And talk about pricing for a second. So,
how I understood it.
CTTP have different pricing levels for different buyers.
(16:25):
It's common.
And it was all managed in NetSuite before.
Right?
Honestly, that's a tough one for most of commerce
platform track.
What was your solution in the Commerce then?
Yeah.
So like they have like another layer on top of that particular pricing.
Like for example,
(16:45):
as you mentioned, that's specifically like that's perfectly
right that like all the B2B customers do have different
pricing for different companies within ERP.
It doesn't matter if it is NetSuite,
if it is Microsoft Dynamics Business Central or any other ERP.
They do have like different pricing for different companies.
Now bringing on those price levels to become it, become it does have
(17:06):
the functionality of price list to like point that company to company pricing.
That is something that can be done.
But there was an additional demand that they were using.
There was an additional feature in ERP that they were using was contract
specific pricing that they were doing contract for specific items, for,
like specific customers, so that, contract specific pricing
(17:29):
was adding additional discount on a few items on top of that price level.
So you can say there was an additional layer,
that they, like, wanted to have.
So what did Folio3's solution do?
We utilized BigCommerce price list feature
because that feature, has like complete,
in-depth, you can say, implementation.
(17:52):
We do not want to add some another additional pricing layer.
We just wanted to use utilize the BigCommerce prices feature.
So what we did is that like we segregate those contract, specific pricing
for those specific items, we pull in the base price level
and we created a new price list for that specific company
so that using the native become as feature, we were able to,
(18:15):
integrate that specific contract pricing into BigCommerce
with a separate price list with a new price list for that specific company.
So that way it didn't hurt anything, on the performance part as well.
And also, yeah, there was a bit of, like interval,
like while syncing the data from, like, ERP to be common.
(18:35):
But yeah, they were fine with that because,
there were very few customer that they wanted to have that.
And in 15 minutes they can,
see the, the latest pricing on their e-commerce storefront.
So, yeah,
that is the solution that, like we, did for it specifically for them
because, yeah, there are many other B2B customers as well.
After doing this implementation for CTTP, we also received some more inquiries on
(18:58):
especially the customers
who are going to a big commercial, using the native price list feature.
They wanted to achieve this context specific pricing as well.
So, yeah, that was the solution that we did.
Good.
Yeah.
So let's talk about something that's I mean, not supported by default.
Right.
So as I understood it to CTTP,
(19:19):
required thinking of group items from naturally to BigCommerce.
Obviously functionality not supported by default, like I've said.
So when we talk about group items in NetSuite,
it's something that a lot of ERP heavy businesses deal with.
How did you ensure that complexity didn't
break the BigCommerce store?
(19:41):
Yeah.
Very good question.
So we pitched a couple of solutions to them, for that.
Like one is that using BigCommerce native Picklist feature,
although we just needed to have like minor tweaks in representing
that group product on the e-commerce piece, on the storefront piece.
But, yeah,
they were more likely to have, like, if we can add those in a group product.
(20:03):
What is group product like? Let's first discuss this.
Like in a group product, we have some additional component
on top of the base and parent product.
So for example, if you want to sync that from ERP to e-commerce.
So you have to like sync that additional component information as well.
So what like our integration did there, like,
their completely
(20:23):
fresh tools, group product and then additional component
sync those as a simple product within BigCommerce.
And on the product detail page, we list the details
of all those additional components that when the customer is going
to purchase that, what additional, pieces coming along, the main group product,
so they can have that information and the reflection
(20:44):
of those additional components in order, invoicing, etc., that we handled.
So, like, yeah.
So as I mentioned, there are a couple of ways
maybe we can do the picklist part, that can also handle that.
We just have to do minor tweaks on the product detail page for that.
But yeah, they were more comfortable on adding that as a simple individual
product.
So, our integration managed that bunch in the, like,
(21:07):
consolidate the, the additional components and sync it from ERP to e-commerce.
So, yeah, that's the solution, that we did.
You make it sound easy. It's a slick implementation. Really cool.
All right, so another tricky one.
Inventory across multiple locations.
How did you manage the real time
(21:27):
sync and display logic for customers?
Right.
So, let me first tell you
what support in the multi-location we got from e-commerce platform.
That should be the first question.
So, we have the complete backend system,
that is supporting Multi-location within BigCommerce.
(21:49):
And we do have the API support for, multi location within BigCommerce.
Yeah, just the, the frontend piece that we had to develop
the user experience that we had to develop utilizing those APIs.
So on their homepage and listing page, on the header,
they were like, I forget the competitor name
(22:10):
they were talking about,
but yeah, this was a competitor who was doing that, like on the,
top of the header, customer can select the store or the warehouse
and inventory, status for that particular store can be,
rendered on specific products on the complete listing
page, either we talk about for title page or any other listing page.
(22:30):
So, that the, the whole pages can be covered, with that dropdown,
whatever they will select, they will see the, the
the inventory status as per the selected location. So,
we actually,
use the BigCommerce built in APIs for fetching the locations,
populating that in the top down and then, like, fetching the,
(22:53):
the store latest stock status of that particular location
within that, like the product cart that we have on listing page.
And same goes for the product detail page as well
that we listed that information there as well.
So, yeah.
And obviously with the same manner we can do that on cart and checkout as well.
We can fetch in the location, drop down.
Customer can select where they are going to pick up.
(23:15):
So buy online.
Pick up in-store is kind of a common thing.
So, yeah, we just have to develop the user experience part
for the backend mechanism handler
One more thing here.0:23:25:14 - 00:23:29:05 If we talk about, again, going back to our NetSuite and e-commerce
connector, the product that we have.
So in order to reflect the latest inventory, our connector
was handling that piece and fetching and syncing the right
(23:38):
inventory to the right warehouse from ERP to e-commerce.
So, yeah, that is how we manage it.
You guys make it sound so easy.
But we do make it a little easier for businesses.
I understand too. That's cool.
All right.
So now, look, being an auto parts search is everything.
(23:58):
I think you actually said this earlier.
Noman, so what customizations or features did they need
to make product discovery easier?
Right.
So in search there were two questions.
First, in terms of performance,
should we look to some third party search?
That was the first question.
(24:18):
Second was that like, especially as you mentioned, that
in terms of automotive industry, we have to like,
manage the requirement that most of the automotive customers
have, like, for example, as I told earlier, that searching against
different cross references, that they have, like, for example,
that same cross references is being sold, by another manufacturer as well.
(24:42):
So customers should be able to search with all the different patterns,
of the cross-reference and the SKU itself.
Now, coming to the first part. So,
why should we go
to some third party search engine,
from become a default search engine?
So that question comes in and we bring in BigCommerce solution team as well there.
(25:03):
They also advise like for example, it depends on the Merf SKUs.
Obviously if you talk about 5 million, 10 million.
No, BigCommerce is fine.
If you talk about like somewhere around another like 50
million, 100 million products.
So yeah, maybe you
can look after some third party search engine that can give us additional support
if we need some kind of, significant performance.
(25:24):
Otherwise that can, like, be handled.
So, we got a checkmark here that.
No, we don't want to go there.
So, now coming to the second piece, that, like, how, we should handle that.
So that is something we do not have to do any customization
because there is a functionality in BigCommerce of assigning
search keywords against every product.
(25:45):
We have a field in BigCommerce where we can,
like add in as many as search keywords that we want to.
So what we with, like, get the data from ERP
of all the cross-references against that specific product, we, like,
consolidate the data and put it in the search keyword field for that product.
(26:05):
So, like BigCommerce search engine handle it automatically.
So yeah, it's like boom!
So we don't have to do anything specific to that.
So yeah. Okay. Cool.
So I one feature I know stood up
to this team, at CTTP, they wanted to restrict access
right to specific OEM catalogs based on customer type.
(26:29):
How did you tackle that?
Did you use customer groups or price list or something custom?
No.
We were actually thinking of maybe if you can go to some custom solution.
But yeah, there is another feature in BigCommerce.
Like we can assign categories to customer group.
So for example, we discussed this with CTTP team.
(26:52):
They were fine with that.
Like, segregating different products into different categories.
Like, for example, like why they need that, for automotive industry,
there are two types of spare parts for example OEM part.
By OEM we mean like original equipment manufacturer, like
There is the original part and then there are non-OEM products.
So, if we have some customer who is specifically searching
(27:16):
for OEM products, so they had to display OEM product to them.
They don't want to like go to search, like for example, if they are searching
any OEM SKY, they don't want to show both of these SKUs to them.
They just want to show the OEM SKUs. So what we did
is that we categorized those products into an OEM and Non OEM part.
And then like associate that is specific category to a specific customer group.
(27:40):
And like for example, we had two customer of the OEM and Non OEM.
So that like yeah, we just had to,
customize a bit the front end part, the menu navigation part.
Like for example, if, an OEM customer is logging in, they,
they should see the OEM specific categories.
If the other customers are logging in, they should see their relevant category.
(28:01):
So these are the customization that we had to manage.
And like CTTP team also like agrees
to put in all the data by themselves and segregate that into different categories.
So this is how like, we don't have to go much, into much advanced customization.
We had a little bit, a bit of customization
and, a bit of native feature that BigCommerce offers.
(28:25):
Yeah. Perfect.
I'm going to wrap up this section, too, by just,
looking
back, you know, what was the toughest technical challenge on this project?
You guys, what really tested the team?
To be honest, the pricing part,
because as I mentioned, that, like the additional pricing layer,
because, it's not like kind of that it was impacting the performance.
(28:49):
It was impacting anything.
But we had to like the main goal as an agency
was to, utilize the native features of both platform of ERP and e-commerce
without hurting any core feature of both platform
and specifically cover all the edge cases that we have.
So that was a big challenge that, like we both teams
(29:10):
sit in and integration team also played a good part there
in order to and will also bring in like, Adam Ward from BigCommerce.
Who is the solution architect there.
He also like, into the solution.
So, yeah, that was like kind of an end to end, discussion.
We all brainstormed there and we, came to a specific solution.
(29:31):
So, yeah, that is something I can say was a bit of challenging part of.
Definitely.
Well, this was a complex build, you guys, but one was huge pay off.
Right.
You know, commercial truck and trailer parts
went from no e-commerce to a full fledged B2B portal
integrated with NetSuite and optimized for their unique buyers.
(29:52):
I think the final question for the team, you know,
what advice would you give to other B2B businesses like CTTP, who are still sitting
on the sidelines, hesitant to make that leap?
I think,
the one was advice that we would really give is that online visibility
(30:14):
is really important for B2B commerce brands these days, and since
AI has come along, it's really important to build that trust factor,
towards your target audience.
So yeah, that's what I would really recommend
it's really important to not just have an end to end platform,
but also ensure that all of your tools, all of your systems, whether it's an ERP
(30:37):
or whether it's a CRM, whether it's any other tools,
they should really talk to each other.
They should really be very, well-integrated,
with each other and all customer data, product data, pricing and everything.
It should be synced smoothly and intelligently.
So yeah, that's what I that's what I would really recommend.
Yeah.
The way that I would answer that is there's
(31:00):
no better time than now to, to start that transformation.
Right.
Digital transformation has been a term for decades now.
But we need to realize from a B2B perspective that everyone in their home
life is used to the convenience of Amazon and other like, instantaneous purchasing.
We have buyers that are,
(31:20):
you know, making that buying decision once they've already done their own research.
So they don't necessarily need, you know, the human connection on the front end to,
sell you the product and, you know, talk to you about why you need a certain one.
They need the human connection to bond with your business.
Right.
And really,
you know,
have all of the additional value adds that the company brings to the product.
(31:42):
But if we're not put in our catalogs online and we're not,
you know, building out, the path where a customer can go through that,
you know, educational learning process and building
product, we're leaving money on the table
and we're completely missing out on that channel.
So if we
implement a solution like this one and like others that we've done,
(32:03):
the goal is to, you know, look at it as a new channel
that's adopted, you know, not as a sorry to rephrase that,
don't adopt B2B as another channel that has its own attribution.
Adopt it as a way, that is core to your company.
So it's another tool for sales reps, not a tool that conventional sales
reps are fighting against.
(32:23):
And then, you know, high tide rises all ships. Right.
And we see the ability to service your customers in a better way.
You know, give them the products.
That's, you know, in front of them.
Give them the ability to code and kind of get the information that that they need.
And from a business perspective, your sales reps are able to handle more,
(32:43):
and then from a customer's perspective,
they're still able to have that personal connection on the stuff
that matters and not the tedious stuff of passing spreadsheets back and forth.
So those are my thoughts.
Perfect.
Yeah, I guess I had my 2 cents, right.
What we see today is, B2B online
sales is outpacing offline sales by eight times.
(33:04):
And, from now to 2030, it looks like B2B
online sales, will hit about 40% globally.
Yeah, right.
40% of all sales.
And so offline sales are really looking stagnant to where you put your investment.
You know, if I put my CEO or CFO hat on boards and digital, right.
(33:25):
And then, you combine that with what's happening with, the buyer side.
Right?
B2B buyers are online more than ever before to discover
new suppliers, to order reorder, or to evaluate new suppliers.
And so,
90% of that buyer journey is already complete
before they even contact the company.
So you need to be in front of them and where to be in front of them.
(33:47):
Right.
We see a
shift in digital marketing right now
where traditional marketing, is actually,
switching from just SEO search to those chat systems.
And so we want to be prevalent wherever your buyers are.
And this is a team that can really help you.
So honestly, massive thanks to, our Folio3 team
(34:11):
for joining and sharing the behind the scenes, transformation story of CTTP.
I'm going to leave you with this.
If you're manufacturer, distributor or a parts supplier
thinking about going digital, you don't have to go, you know, at it
alone, right?
With the right platform and the right partner, it's possible.
So thanks.
(34:31):
You guys enjoyed this one.
Catch you on the next.
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