An important focus for B2B companies today is providing their customers with experiences similar to those of B2C companies. This involves several aspects, such as starting a digital transformation, simplifying the purchasing process, and working towards more personalized interactions. B2C retailers have excelled at using data regularly to uncover insights and guide decisions. For B2B companies to achieve this, they need to make data more accessible and easier for stakeholders throughout the organization to analyze—especially when digital commerce is a new venture for the business.
Here are the top four digital commerce dashboards that B2B merchants should be monitoring, which teams need to see them, and how they can act on the data:
1. COMPANY PROFILES
Who should see this dashboard: Strategy teams, Directors, Sales directors
Merchants should know how the accounts they sell to are doing based on key metrics like time since the last order and total revenue. This gives them a complete picture of all purchases happening among different buyers in the company and shows the overall status of the account. Keeping an eye on these metrics can help merchants spot problems early. For instance, if company A usually orders every four weeks but the records show their last order was six weeks ago, they can look into whether there’s a problem or just seasonal changes.
2. CATALOG PERFORMANCE
Who should see this dashboard: Sales teams, Merchandisers, eCommerce team
To provide a more unique and personalized experience, B2B companies can create various catalogs to offer specialized pricing and custom product assortments to customers. It is important for modern-day B2B companies to understand the performance of each catalog across various performance indicators. As a result, a merchant is able to understand the effectiveness of a broad discount they may have provided on one catalog vs. another. Furthermore, they can identify which catalogs are driving the most revenue and identify the best-selling products in that catalog which could open conversations around testing the elasticity of their pricing.
3. QUOTES
Who should see this dashboard: Sales reps, Sales Managers, Operations Managers, eCommerce Managers
Going through a quoting and negotiation process is common for B2B companies prior to an order being placed. Improving quote-to-order conversion rates and the time it takes to come to an agreement are key to maximizing revenue for B2B companies. By regularly tracking things like median negotiation length and negotiation success rate, merchants are able to monitor trends to help them identify what is influencing a change in order completion rates. This dashboard enables data-driven conversations to take place around the performance of their quoted business and the overall effectiveness of the quotes being developed.
4. SALES REPS
Who should see this dashboard: Sales reps, Sales Managers,
Sales reps are the lifeblood of a lot of B2B companies and it is no secret that they have various metrics that are important to keep track of. For example, using a streamlined dashboard, a sales rep can quickly identify and discuss active negotiations for strategy meetings. Sales reps also need data that can help them focus their attention on their most pressing tasks such as which quotes are expiring soon, and which contracts are up for renewal. At the same time, a Sales Manager can gain a lot of value from the same dashboard. He or she can save time by monitoring team member performance across multiple KPIs, all in one place. This is important to keep individuals on track and ensure focus is placed on areas that need attention.