Sales used to be agreed upon with a handshake, but more and more business transactions occur with the click of a button (and a credit card number, of course). It's clear from the success of sites like Amazon that consumers are moving online. Online sales totaled $305 billion last year, according to the Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce. In the fourth quarter alone, online sales accounted for 7.7 percent of total sales with $96 billion-a 14.7 percent increase over the same time in 2013.
But what about business-to-business (B2B) sales? In the print and promotional industry, those sales seem to be following the same trend. With e-commerce becoming the norm in retail, B2B clients might be interested in having the same option-to sign onto your website, quickly find and design what they need, and purchase it. (Don't worry, you can call them to catch up another time). We spoke to two companies that have created software that will make the jump online less scary-and for those already online, they might just have an upgraded version of your current system's capabilities.
navINK
In an effort to help clients streamline business, Navitor, a commercial printer based in North Mankato, Minn., launched a new endeavor called navINK in fall 2014. It consists of three components-DESIGNworks, BRANDworks and eCOMMworks. The latter is an e-commerce website, but the company's main focus has been on the other two, which are product design tools that can be incorporated into an existing website or one navINK creates. "The secret sauce that Navitor provides is that we know print, we know how products need to be built, how products need to be configured," Tom Rau, director of navINK eProduct Management for Navitor, said. "And we've been doing this for a long time, so we brought all of that knowledge into the product configurators and bring those to market independent of the printing aspect of Navitor. It's really technology as a product."
DESIGNworks is embedded into the website, providing users a template and allowing them to seamlessly create their product, proof it and add it to their shopping cart. "There are a lot of rules around a business card or a rubber stamp or a name badge, and those rules are in the template," Rau said. "And [that] allows the user full freedom to design a product, basically proof it online, and the configurator then creates the press PDF and passes that information on to wherever it needs to go."
While business-to-consumer (B2C) and smaller B2B companies typically utilize DESIGNworks, large B2B companies favor BRANDworks, which offers a more brand-controlled template that can be applied to multiple products, making frequent orders easier. "The templates are created and then put into a catalog," Rau said. "From that catalog, the BRANDworks configurator allows the user to manipulate those fields that are allowable in the template, again creating the press PDF and sending it off."
Rau also noted that using these product configurators does not limit users to only printing with Navitor. "It's agnostic, so to speak, in terms of where we send those press PDF files to," he said. "It can be a Navitor plant. It can be a third-party plant. It can be the actual client's plant. It's built to be flexible that way."
Customer Focus
Rebranded from Trade Only this month, Customer Focus, Costa Mesa, Calif., offers STORE, a front-end customer-facing website, and VISION, a back-end management system. They can be used individually, but work best together.
STORE can be designed from a template and ready to use within two days, or custom-built, which would take a little longer. It is also mobile friendly and includes Technologo, a program that showcases the product with the desired imprint. "Those stores can be inquiry-based only or they can be e-commerce where you can actually take a transaction on the site. It's up to the distributor," said Philip Shehadeh, vice president of sales and marketing for Customer Focus.
VISION allows distributors to manage everything behind the scenes. They can pull in products from about 300 suppliers-including Gill Studios Inc., Leed's, Logomark and Prime Line-manually add products from any other suppliers and then edit product descriptions, pricing, etc.
Additionally, the VISION system can create presentations and calculate sales quotes, and has a customer relationship management system to track communication with clients. As orders come in, the system tracks and splits them among the desired suppliers. "The system knows what supplier that product is coming from, so they don't have to go and search that," Shehadeh said. "The system can have 100 line items in an order and break it up, and let's say it's coming from 100 different suppliers-the system knows what suppliers those are coming from automatically."
The program, which has been around for about five years, receives continuous updates, with a new version to be released soon. "We aggressively develop new features," Shehadeh said. "We're always looking and making sure that we're staying ahead of the competition and that we are creating new features and modulars for our distributors to increase sales and streamline or automate their business processes."
How They Increase Sales
Customer Focus' software works together, with STORE's search-engine optimization feature driving potential clients to the sites while VISION streamlines the order process. "It allows your profits to be streamlined and your systems automated, which saves time and allows you to spend time selling and going after more business rather than managing existing orders," Shehadeh said.
He explained the scenario of clients who only use its STORE option and receive orders via email instead of automatically in VISION. "I ask them what do they do after that. They go, 'Oh, I have to go into our system and see what supplier the product is coming from and this and that.' I mean, imagine how many things are getting lost," he said. "So when you have a VISION system-one centralized place-it's hard for things to get lost, so no orders are slipping through the cracks, customers are not getting upset when things aren't going to be delivered on time or there's not correspondence."
Rau recalled one case where a client who had an older program switched to DESIGNworks as a punch out from its catalog. "The sales definitely have gone up [for that client]," Rau said. "It's a B2B ad-hoc implementation where clients who have contracts and have contracted print and contracted supply can quickly choose a product to configure and add to the cart at a contract price. We've seen that particular element-adding
ad-hoc capabilities to a B2B catalog has been where the sales jump because it's been pretty much incremental."
How They're Changing the Industry
While some customers prefer face-to-face interaction or phone ordering, these Web options provide an alternative method to do business and a new way to find and to keep customers. "Distributor Web technology is moving forward rapidly, and adopting our Web solutions is a great way for distributors to stay ahead of their competition," Shehadeh said.
These tools also are integrating a variety of products in one space, thus creating a better user experience. Rau pointed out that a forms printer would just have a forms builder, but navINK allows users to build all print items needed instead of submitting materials to each company separately. "Product breadth is key and being able to make the purchasing experience and buying experience seamless is very important to retaining customers and having that loyalty-that you're the site they go to for anything," Rau said. "What we're trying to do is we're trying to map our product roadmap strategy around technology to that online experience."
Amanda L. Cole is the editor-in-chief of NonProfit PRO. She was formerly editor-in-chief of special projects for NonProfit PRO's sister publication, Promo Marketing. Contact her at acole@napco.com.