Article:
Satisfying Your
Sales Channels with Collaborative eCommerce
As a
manufacturer, importer or distributor, you
are facing today’s difficult business
challenge in how to compete and succeed in
the Internet economy. Your traditional
channels of sales and distribution are being
or should be recast to take advantage of the
Internet and this implies new ways of
utilizing your reseller or channel assets.
While you and
many other companies feel the pressure to
sidestep competitors with a first-to-market
advantage, there is little benefit in
aimlessly building and implementing
e-commerce systems. Many companies are
taking a haphazard approach to the Internet,
trying to shoehorn existing business
practices into simplistic e-commerce
capabilities or worse, drastically changing
current effective business practices.
A more sensible
approach is to determine how to use the
Internet to optimize and extend your
company's established sales methods and
align your e-commerce strategy with your
company's overall goals. The question is not
whether you should utilize Internet sales
channels, but how can you do so in a
profitable way without alienating your
existing distributors, resellers, dealers
and clients.
But where do
you start and what are the essential
elements of a collaborative commerce
solution? Before embarking on an e-commerce
strategy you need to ask yourself a few
important questions on how you will relate
your business needs with those of your
reseller partners.
The Gartner
Group estimates that over 90% of
manufacturers, importers or distributors do
not sell their primary branded products
online. Why? The primary reason is channel
conflict; fear of the consequences of going
into business against your own selling
partners.
Therefore,
typically many manufacturers or primary
distributors establish a website that simply
helps customers gather product information
and build a shopping list, which they can
then take to the nearest physical store.
Ultimately, your website does not close the
sale and has no visibility into whether
these customers actually purchased your
products from your reseller.
Not only do you
give up the rights to a new revenue stream,
but you also lose control over, and insight
into, the commerce activities within your
own customer base.
But, what if
you could provide customers with a unified
and guided selling experience across your
sales channels by presenting a seamless
selling experience to your customers and
site visitors while integrating the
value-add of your reseller network? Your
customers could access real-time product
information including pricing and
availability through resellers directly from
your web site and their respective web
sites.
And what if
your e-commerce system could ensure that
products were properly configured and orders
routed to the appropriate sales partner?
This way you would remain intimately
involved in the e-commerce activities of
your resellers, while maintaining influence
over the sales process and customer
experience.
You must
determine which of your sales channels to
take to the web. You may presently utilize
multiple channels to respond effectively to
your customers' needs such as your direct
sales teams plus a mix of resellers,
retailers, OEMs, and dealers who deliver
value to your customers and strategic value
to you by providing you with global and
vertical reach, logistics and additional
value-added services.
It will be
necessary to formulate an integrated
strategy that provides a common
infrastructure for all of these sales
channels that you take to the web and then
provide an e-commerce infrastructure that
integrates all of them within a single
cohesive system.
This online
collaboration will allow your active
participation in all aspects of your
customer's sales and marketing experience,
from shopping and product configuration to
fulfillment and feedback. Short-term rewards
include reduced costs through process
automation and efficiencies. Long-term
rewards include increased revenue, greater
customer and partner loyalty, and the
ability to create strong sell-side
partnerships that help differentiate
products.
Your resellers
want to work with you, yet an Internet
business strategy that does not consider all
your relevant sales channels, including
their sales and distribution models and
related business processes is a recipe for
failure. -
John Shenton - July, 2002
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