Wouldn’t it be great to give customers a self-service B2B web store—one that always shows personalized inventory and pricing? Imagine if that web store also offered 100% visibility into orders and invoices—not only from the web store, but for all channels.

These are only a few of the reasons that companies launch B2B web stores integrated to their ERP systems. And while a web store project can be challenging, a trusted advisor who owns the solution (and the project) from top to bottom makes that complexity simple. (Hint: That’s the thinking behind Corevist.)

So how do you know if you’re ready to launch that B2B web store?

Here are 3 signs that it’s time to move forward.

1. Your customers are begging for a B2B web store

For organizations that don’t have an ERP-integrated B2B web store, life gets complicated. The same goes for customers. Without such a solution, customers encounter all kinds of obstacles when they do business with you.

• If you have a disconnected web store, customers may have to call customer service to get the real truth about pricing and inventory availability. This makes it hard to click that “Buy Now” button in the web store—because the solution can’t provide the assurance that only comes with real-time ERP data.
• If you don’t have a B2B web store, chances are, customers have to conduct all their business through a sales or customer service rep. This means emails, phone calls, and maybe even faxes. These processes are slow and outdated, which frustrates customers. (Hint: They’re also expensive for you.)

In either scenario, customers want a better way to do business. In fact, 85% of B2B buyers will drop a supplier with a bad digital experience.

In other words, if you don’t have a B2B web store that shows real-time data from your ERP, you need one! This is the only way to give customers the transparency and self-service capabilities they need.

2. Your business truly lives in SAP ERP

It’s one thing to have your ERP implemented. It’s another thing to ensure that all business processes and data really do reside in the ERP.

In this regard, most organizations exist somewhere on a spectrum. No company is perfect when it comes to data governance. Some companies are good at it, while others excel at it.

Wherever you land, you know you’re ready for an ERP-integrated B2B web store when the following points are true about your organization.

• Every customer is a known entity in your ERP, and you have an established process for signing up new customers.
• Your organization uses your ERP as the system of record for products, pricing, and inventory availability—or you’re ready to commit to using the ERP this way.
• Sales and customer service reps consistently use your ERP as the system of record when interacting with customers.
• Your IT team has a firm commitment to supporting your ERP.

3. Whether you’re migrating to S/4HANA or not, you have a plan for your ERP program

Not every SAP company is ready for the big shift to S/4HANA. Some are choosing to stabilize their ECC system for the long haul.

Others are excited to capitalize on the power of cloud-based technology. They’re scoping their S/4HANA migrations and planning the next phase of their ERP program.

Either way, one thing is for sure: If you know the future of your ERP program and the way it will support your business, you’re ready for an integrated B2B web store.

Believe it or not, a solution like Corevist Commerce Cloud can launch now, integrated to ECC—then follow you to S/4HANA with minimal heavy lifting.

If you’re a new SAP client building out your S/4HANA solution, you can even implement Corevist alongside S/4. In fact, you should—so you can leverage essential configurations to align S/4 with best practices for integrated B2B web stores.

This brings up an important point. You don’t need to have all the details figured out in your S/4HANA implementation before launching a B2B web store. As long as you’ve committed to a specific ERP platform, it’s time to move forward with your B2B ecommerce solution. When your web store “gets in on the ground floor” of S/4HANA, you ensure that everything is configured properly from the start. This saves headaches, cost, and risk down the road.

Whatever your scenario, there’s one major takeaway: You’re ready for a B2B web store when you have a high-level roadmap for your ERP program.

The takeaway: Don’t wait to sell more stuff

Whatever your future plans are for your ERP, one thing’s for sure: The costs of your ERP program will continue to rise.

Ultimately, that’s the strongest argument for launching a B2B web store that’s integrated to your ERP. The web store will drive revenue growth by providing a better customer experience, cross-selling and upselling, and easy access for customers to their account data.

When the web store provides this information in real time, from your ERP, you achieve synergy between your ERP and your customer experience. Leveraging these economies of scale puts your business in a better place than you were without the web store. It’s what sets leaders apart from followers in their industry.

That’s what we’re all about here at Corevist.