E-COMMERCE FOR B2B & SUPPLY CHAINS

There is--and has been--opportunity for e-commerce B2B. The underlying issue is how they will manage the orders--with the same tired supply chain practices as always?  Or with the new supply chain?

October 20, 2014, 2:57 PM

B2B pros look to invest more in e-commerce platforms

By Thad RueterSenior Editor

Content management and mobile technology are also priorities, according to a Forrester Research survey.

E-commerce platform work stands as one of the top technology investment priorities in 2015 for business-to-business professionals, Forrester Research Inc. says. It bases that finding on a survey of 75 B2B online professionals conducted during the second quarter of 2014, the Forrester Research/Internet Retailer Q2 2014 Global B2B Sell-Side Survey, and cited by Forrester analyst Andy Hoar in a recent webinar hosted by Internet Retailer.
E-commerce platform technology, cited by 61% of respondents, tied with web content management tools as a top investment target. Other areas cited by survey respondents include: order management, financial reporting and other back-end integration tasks, 56%; mobile sites and apps, 52%; product content management tools, 40%; and multichannel integration, 36%.
By way of comparison, an exclusive Internet Retailer magazine story from July found that 61.6% of respondents put e-commerce platform at the top of the technology investment lists, good enough for first place there. That survey included responses from e-commerce executives whose customers are consumers as well as businesses.
The October report from Forrester, the “2^nd Annual B2B Sell-Side Survey,” also finds that 67% of the B2B respondents anticipate increasing technology budgets over the next year and only 2% expect decreases. That compares with 86.6% who said the same in the Internet Retailer survey.
The recent Forrester report also finds that B2B professionals expect their companies to earmark about 8% of online sales to technology needs.