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George Anderson

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Where digital meets legacy processes

At Corevist, we’re obsessed with digitizing the customer experience of our clients. Reducing friction in the ordering process is our passion, from finding the right product to accurate contract pricing, all the way to self-service order placement, status checks, and open invoice payment. It’s why we’re here.

While digital processes and platforms offer amazing gains in efficiency and customer satisfaction, the reality is, not all customers are ready to follow you into total digitization on Day 1. Some depend on paper processes internally to do business with you. This shouldn’t detract from your efforts to run a lean, powerful B2B ecommerce operation; rather, it may require making some information from your SAP-integrated web store available in traditional formats. 

That’s exactly what we did for a client recently. Their customers needed an open item statement in a traditional format. Without this printable open item statement, internal processes kept customers from placing orders.

Here’s the problem (and the solution we delivered).

The Problem: Multiple stakeholders involved in credit decisions

Corevist Commerce is designed to give full, self-service account management to the ecommerce user who has the appropriate privileges. That means the user can log in and see a real-time list, straight from SAP, of all open invoices for the account. With an SAP payments integration, the user can select invoices and pay them down in real time, whether by credit card, ACH transfer, or another preferred method.

99% of the time, this workflow is an easy fit for our clients’ customers. The user with appropriate privileges also as the authority to decide which invoices should get paid down first. However, in the case of our client, their customers needed more. They needed the ability to circulate a list of open items manually within their Accounts Payable department to get consensus on which invoices to pay first.

In other words, the question these users asked wasn’t simply, “What do I owe you?” (Corevist Commerce answers that question out of the box with real-time SAP data.)

Rather, the question was, “What do I owe you, and can you give it to me in a format which I can circulate amongst my A/P people, so they can decide which ones they want to pay down, so I can get off credit block and keep placing orders?”

Our Solution: Self-service open item statement available for download

Once we knew the full extent of our client’s customers’ needs, we took it a step further and made the open item statement available in a convenient format. The user can now download the statement in Excel or PDF and then circulate it amongst colleagues. Now our client’s customers can get decisions on invoices, get them paid down, and keep on buying.

It’s worth noting that this is real-time, self-service information from SAP. Without a B2B portal like Corevist Commerce, the customer would have no access to that SAP data, except to call, email, or fax Customer Service and ask for it. It’s just one more way we remove friction in the buying process for manufacturers.

Why it matters: Digital transformation isn’t done on Day 1

We’ve worked with manufacturers long enough to realize that digital transformation of customer experience is a journey. Not all customers are ready for new processes at the same time. In this case, we’re integrating a standard Corevist Commerce workflow (“look up open items”) into a client customer process that isn’t totally automated (“figure out which invoices to pay first”). We’re adding value to our client and their customer by meeting this process where it’s at today.

Moving forward: FREE case study

Wondering how SAP-integrated ecommerce works in complex organizations? Download this case study on Blount International. You’ll learn how this manufacturer launched Corevist Commerce for self-service ecommerce order placement—with EDI fitting into the picture, too.

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