There is a reason why Amazon, Alibaba and other online retailers are seeing meteoric growth while once popular brick and mortar brand names – Circuit City, RadioShack, Office Depot, Barnes & Noble – are falling by the wayside. 

Customers value convenience, accessibility, and price competitiveness gained from their E-Commerce experience. In fact, Forrester reports that 93% of B2B buyers say that they prefer to buy online rather than from a salesperson when they’ve decided on what to buy.

A comprehensive omni-channel strategy is increasingly becoming the top priority of corporate executives, strategists and decision makers, in firms of all sizes and in different industries, worldwide. In a recent survey 122 CMOs by TheCMOClub, 63% of firms were either at an “early implementation” stage or “Plan to launch in 6-12 months” omni-channel initiatives.

But adopting an E-Commerce channel strategy for cross-channel customers isn’t merely an appeasement of consumer habits; there is much to be gained on the business-side as well.  The omni-channel concept resonates strongly because of dramatic benefits to be gained in growing revenues and margins.

Here are 5 reasons why E-Commerce built on the Salesforce Platform creates a competitive advantage:

1. Sell Anytime, from Any Device
   
   Customers, whether it’s for B2B or B2C, prefer online shopping. Make it easy for customers to buy from you again and again by making your products and services available anytime, and anywhere, with branded self-service portals available on desktop and mobile. Put your products in your customers’ hands—no matter where or when they are ready to buy.
2. Offer the Right Products at the Right Time
   
   Accelerate sales cycles and influence buying behaviors by making it easy for customers to find exactly what they need. Much like Amazon’s recommendation engine, it’s imperative to offer up other relevant products, services and bundles, in order to close more deals and increase revenue. On the backed you should be able to leverage robust analytics to identify and surface the exact product and pricing triggers that keep your customers coming back time and again.
3. Provide Flexibility
   
   Omni-channel businesses need flexibility to sell and uniformly communicate with each of their customers regardless of their buying preferences. Provide self-service or partner portals, online catalogues, real-time assistance, and tailored offers across each of your channels. You can keep all your channels up to date with correct product and pricing information with ease when your e-commerce is powered by Salesforce and a Configure Price Quote (CPQ) solution.
4. Analyze in Real-Time
   
   Understand your channel performance with analytics fueled by the real-time activities of your E-Commerce portals. Track product, pivot pricing models and increase sales rates and revenue performance to meet goals. Uncover your bottlenecks and remove barriers to sales to truly transform the way you do business.
5. Manage it All with Ease
   
   With clicks-not-code technology, enterprises can define catalogs, products, services and associated options and promotions once. Make strategic updates in minutes, then replicate them across multiple e-commerce sites. 

Join Bluewolf and Apttus to unpack the three key trends most affecting sales teams today, learn best practices, and discover how one company doubled the amount of sales proposals in just 60 days. Register Now 

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