How CSS Customized a B2B Shopping Cart to Enable Bulk Purchasing
Superior Communications (SC) is a leading distributor of mobile accessories to big box retailers, e-commerce dealers, and large wireless carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. When your B2B customers can’t place bulk orders for distribution to multiple destinations – you have a problem for CSS Commerce (CSS) to handle. Most standard shopping carts are designed for consumer marketplaces where single orders are shipped to one address. This meant that big box retailers and large wireless carriers would have to place individual orders for delivery to hundreds or even thousands of shipping destinations.
SC wanted to offer customers easy-to-use web-based self-service portals to enable centralized multi-destination bulk purchase functionality to meet buyer demands for one-page purchase orders. Their goal was to increase revenue and market share by being one of the first to develop a single-page e-commerce shopping cart specifically designed for B2B Buyers.
CSS’ task was to streamline the ordering process by designing an e-commerce shopping cart app that was digitally mapped to the B2B buying process of large customers.
The CSS Approach
CSS needed an open source e-commerce development environment for the team to design, test, and deploy customized applications.
They recommended Magento/Adobe Commerce for its:
- Agile, flexible, and composable headless architecture for easy customization
- API-driven extension & integration functionality for unlimited scalability
- Adobe App Builder to quickly develop, upgrade, & integrate customer-centric business applications as needed.
Then they installed & Customized the Magento/Adobe Commerce platform:
- Set up web-based customer portals for self-service registration, order creation, and order status
- Create user-defined buyer role functionality to enable bulk purchasing by SKU, store, region, or market segment
- Establish purchasing approval hierarchy with automated workflow notifications
- Set up multi-location distribution and fulfillment capability from a single order page
- Establish pricing tiers for volume discount offers and promotions
- Create related product matrixes to increase up- and cross-sell revenue
- Integrate to Product Information Management (PIM) software
- Automate and digitally map data feeds specific to each digital channel & marketplace
The Results?
The single-page e-commerce order form provided a competitive advantage in the mobile accessories marketplace. Superior Communications gained new customers within days of the launch and commented to Superior CIO Ted Wichman “nobody’s even close to you on this.”
The customized shopping cart to accommodate B2B buyers included:
- Self-service customer portals with user-defined data fields to automate purchasing approval routings by buyer, SKU, store, or market segment
- Purchase & distribution template capability by store, warehouse, or SKU to automate standard orders
- Volume discount notifications & logistics optimization for more cost-saving capability
- The ability to answer customer queries in real-time from a single dashboard eliminating the phrase “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
- Improved customer experiences by offering B2B buyers web-based self-service portals with at-a-glance dashboard order status for all assigned stores, market segments, or SKUs
By designing a shopping cart with they B2B buyer in mind, CSS was able to move the revenue needle for SC. CSS was able to map the B2B buyer process by taking a collaborative approach. The project was unique in that CSS wasn’t designing a solution for the client as much as for the client’s customers. They had to extract and leverage SC’s knowledge of their customer’s buying process to design and develop a comprehensive solution.
The consolidated ordering process significantly reduced administrative costs for Superior Communications’ customers by enabling B2B buyers to make single-page bulk purchases for shipment to multiple destinations.
By taking a customer-first approach Superior Communications:
- Significantly reduced administrative costs for their customers creating enhanced brand recognition
- Improved marketplace brand differentiation through creative problem solving rather than glossy advertisements
- Created a valuable feature to attract new business from large companies like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and big box retailers
This application can be applied to any system, open source or not, as long as you can add on to the base code.
About CSS Commerce
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Based in the US, we have your B2X eCommerce solutions and service you need for your Omnichannel and shopping solutions. We work with leading midsize and enterprise manufacturing and distribution companies on their B2X and digital transformation strategies, solution selections and implementation.
We are expert software integration specialists in building your platform, interconnecting all your data needs with special focus on advanced predictive search and conversion on your site. Our specialty is in the 3 pillars of online success: Commerce, Product Search and Supply Chain Visibility. These 3 pillars provide end-to-end visibility of the commerce value chain.
