This ASUG Mem­ber Blog was writ­ten by Waynette Tubbs, direc­tor of mar­ket­ing at Corevist

Did you know that your most impor­tant prod­uct doesn’t have an SAP SKU (stock keep­ing unit)? That’s right. It’s your B2B e‑commerce expe­ri­ence. For bet­ter or worse, your customer’s impres­sion when search­ing for prod­ucts, plac­ing orders, track­ing ship­ments, and pay­ing invoic­es can set you apart from your com­pe­ti­tion. That’s why your top launch pri­or­i­ty should be to assign a prod­uct own­er who can take the e‑commerce expe­ri­ence from con­cept to prof­itable execution. 

Let’s talk about this con­cept and the role the prod­uct own­er (we call them the e‑commerce lead) will play. 

Where the E‑Commerce Lead Sits

You might be scratch­ing your head at this point, think­ing, ​“This sounds like a great idea, but who is this e‑commerce lead? Do they sit in mar­ket­ing? Are they in sales?” 

To begin to answer that, let’s look at the two biggest chal­lenges busi­ness­es face with the launch of an e‑commerce program: 

• Who owns the launch and exe­cu­tion? Who builds the team and man­ages the details?

• What are the dri­vers, goals, and per­for­mance met­rics of this dig­i­tal transformation?

Like any oth­er prod­uct you launch, B2B e‑commerce tran­scends depart­men­tal silos such as IT, sales, mar­ket­ing, and cus­tomer ser­vice. For most prod­ucts, there’s a clear own­er. But this effort is dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion — it’s an orga­ni­za­tion-wide endeav­or with var­i­ous sub-orga­ni­za­tions respon­si­ble for indi­vid­ual pieces. 

So, for man­u­fac­tur­ers, the e‑commerce lead doesn’t real­ly fit into an exist­ing depart­ment. It’s not strict­ly an IT func­tion, but it’s not strict­ly mar­ket­ing or oper­a­tions, either. Com­pa­nies often assign this role under one of those umbrel­las, but that’s a risky move. 

Why? Because those silos are, well, silos that don’t have all of the func­tions need­ed to make this a suc­cess. IT isn’t the own­er, even though this is a huge tech­nol­o­gy under­tak­ing. Cus­tomer ser­vice isn’t the own­er, even though this focus­es so pur­pose­ful­ly on the cus­tomer. Sales doesn’t own it, even though the focus is on sales. And mar­ket­ing isn’t the own­er, even though this will have a huge effect on brand per­cep­tion. They’re all col­lab­o­rat­ing on a larg­er goal, ensur­ing that each new prod­uct is a suc­cess in the market. 

Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence as a prod­uct is dif­fer­ent. Up until now, it hasn’t real­ly required a leader. But the dig­i­tal land­scape push­es all cus­tomer inter­ac­tion into a tech­nol­o­gy plat­form. It’s this shift that neces­si­tates the role of the e‑commerce lead.

In an ide­al sce­nario, the e‑commerce lead will report to a C‑level spon­sor so that they have the author­i­ty to knit togeth­er the dis­parate parts of the busi­ness need­ed to make this a success.

The Role E‑Commerce Plays

The e‑commerce lead has a long list of respon­si­bil­i­ties because e‑commerce has the pow­er to impact every part of the busi­ness. We won’t look at every respon­si­bil­i­ty in detail, but let’s look at the three biggest buckets. 

1. Cus­tomer Advocacy

It’s easy to look to inter­nal per­spec­tives and process­es for guid­ance in e‑commerce, espe­cial­ly if you don’t see it as a prod­uct. But think how dis­as­trous that would be in a tra­di­tion­al prod­uct launch. Teams such as oper­a­tions and IT aren’t equipped to under­stand the mar­ket needs that your prod­uct will (or won’t) fill. They’re strict­ly focused on administration.

And while cus­tomer ser­vice reps (CSRs), sales reps, mar­ket­ing, and IT all have impor­tant view­points that you can’t ignore, none of them act as a direct proxy for the cus­tomer, and these groups most like­ly aren’t think­ing of e‑commerce as a prod­uct. That makes it risky to rely on their per­spec­tives alone.

The e‑commerce lead must be the top cus­tomer advo­cate, scout­ing mar­ket needs in cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and design­ing a prod­uct (your e‑commerce pres­ence) to meet those needs. They must bring a holis­tic view of cus­tomers’ needs, indus­try best prac­tices, and the company’s goals to the table.

When you focus on your cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, a fun­ny thing hap­pens. Most com­pa­nies see gains in cus­tomer loy­al­ty, NPS, and life­time val­ue. Your e‑commerce lead allows you to reori­ent around that goal from the per­spec­tive of e‑commerce. 

2. The E‑commerce Road Map

E‑commerce is not a point-in-time solu­tion: It’s a prod­uct on a jour­ney. That per­spec­tive, along with your dri­ve to con­sis­tent­ly apply the cus­tomer-first phi­los­o­phy, neces­si­tates a road map and road map own­er. Anoth­er key here is flex­i­bil­i­ty. The prod­uct own­er must always be study­ing the land­scape and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. What are best prac­tices? What is the cus­tomer jour­ney like? Where are the roadblocks? 

It’s impor­tant to know when to revise the road map as the market’s pref­er­ences for e‑commerce evolve. That way, you keep e‑commerce aligned to new cor­po­rate strate­gies, iden­ti­fy risks and oppor­tu­ni­ties, and max­i­mize ROI.

Only a ded­i­cat­ed leader can pro­vide that — the e‑commerce lead. 

3. Change Management 

E‑commerce will change your com­pa­ny for­ev­er. Change with­out lead­er­ship is chaos. With­out an e‑commerce lead, there may not be any­one to focus on the impact of orga­ni­za­tion­al change and cul­tur­al upheaval. 

The e‑commerce lead must devel­op a thought­ful plan to man­age these changes. That means engag­ing evan­ge­lists with­in the orga­ni­za­tion, devel­op­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion plans, and train­ing inter­nal and exter­nal users. These things sim­ply won’t hap­pen on their own. They need a leader to own them.

What does that look like in day-to-day oper­a­tions? Here are a few exam­ples of the steps to facil­i­tat­ing a smooth tran­si­tion to e‑commerce:

• Ensure e‑commerce real­ly does elim­i­nate man­u­al work, rather than just shift­ing it to anoth­er department.

• Ensure the sales team is on board from the begin­ning so their com­mis­sions (and their opin­ions of e‑commerce) aren’t neg­a­tive­ly impacted. 

• Ensure mar­ket­ing knows what’s expect­ed of them in terms of dri­ving e‑commerce adoption.

• Ensure the ware­house under­stands its new ful­fill­ment requirements.

• Tran­si­tion finance to accept­ing cred­it cards.

We are just weeks away from ASUG­FOR­WARD, our flag­ship con­fer­ence that will fea­ture SAP experts and cus­tomers dis­cussing how you can lever­age the soft­ware company’s solu­tions to improve your busi­ness and work­flows. Join us June 21‒24.