Generally speaking, e-commerce conversations are spoken in the language of B2C. However, new research from Forrester Consulting has found that B2B-centric e-commerce solutions lead to increases in average order value, company revenue, profitability per order, and decreases in costs per order.
The research, which was commissioned by digital marketing solutions provider EPiServer, surveyed 100 U.S. companies that have implemented B2B e-commerce solutions within the past seven years. Forrester surveyed respondents’ best practices and experiences in B2B e-commerce.
Of the survey respondents, 89% said that implementing e-commerce increased annual company revenue by an average 55%. At 81%, most respondents agreed that e-commerce drove up average order value by about 31%. Eighty-eight percent reported an average increase of 30% higher profitability per order. Only 2% of companies claimed that e-commerce systems book less than 10% of their company’s incremental revenue.
According to the research, 39% of SaaS implementations of B2B e-commerce cost less than $1 million, while only 10% of on-premise implementations cost less than $1 million. However, companies with $1 billion in annual revenues were less likely to deploy in a SaaS environment.
The survey found the following to be the most crucial factors in successful implementation of B2B e-commerce solutions:
• Accurately defining project goals and objectives
• Involving internal and external users throughout the process
• Engaging with both internal and outsourced experts
“We believe these findings highlight the evolution B2B e-commerce has experienced,” EPiServer’s VP of product management Bob Egner said in a statement. “This is a call to action for businesses to step into the quantifiable benefits B2B e-commerce can deliver today.”
