MACH OR NOT: Determining the Best Path for B2B Growth

CONNECTIONS WITH CUSTOMERS, ACROSS CHANNELS, AND BETWEEN SYSTEMS

The commerce industry is remarkably complex and competitive. Customers’ needs and wants are dynamic and different than they used to be. To succeed in the evolving landscape of digital commerce, you need to go beyond transactions and move toward delivering meaningful value by forging connections: connections with customers, across channels, and between systems.

While B2B digital commerce has unique challenges, such as invoice processing, various gated order portals, the importance of loyalty programs, and account administration permissions, it is important to seriously engage with what tech stack and architecture approach will best allow you to create the meaningful, cross-channel digital connections that will grow your business in the long term. 

At B2B Online Florida this year, Jon Panella, GVP of Technology for the Commerce Practice at Publicis Sapient, led a panel discussion where Bob Howland, Chairperson of the MACH Alliance, and JP Saini, Former Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Sunbelt Rentals, gave their viewpoints on the various paths available to businesses looking to transform their digital portfolio.

The panel discussed the many approaches that allow you to meaningfully connect with your customers. They suggest that to determine the correct approach for you, you need to answer 3 questions:

1. What are the goals specific to your business and industry? 
2. How bought into a digital transformation are your organization’s stakeholders?
3. What is the risk appetite of those stakeholders? 

These questions will go a long way in helping you understand what technology and internal operational model is right for you. This article will cover two very different approaches, a MACH-based, compose-your-own solution, and a hybrid, suite-based solution, that yielded the same results: flexibility, scalability, an ability to deliver unique experiences to customers, long-term growth, and high ROI.

YOU NEED A STRATEGIC ROADMAP TO SUPPORT YOUR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Digital transformation puts massive pressure on tech stack, vendor choice, and solution architecture, and with good reason: these are important success factors in a digital transformation. However, what is more important is that you pick the technology and vendors that are best for your business and that you use the architecture most suited to your goals. 

You shouldn’t make all these decisions on your own, which is why your choice of strategic partner is the first, and most important, decision you’ll make in your digital transformation. By partnering with a consultancy firm like Corra, a Company of Publicis Sapient, you’ll work with experienced experts who will rigorously engage with your big-picture business goals and current situation to understand which technology should be implemented to achieve your initiatives best.

We’re not interested in selling technology, we’re interested in delivering value to your business. Our only goal is to help solve your problems and create a situation where you can achieve your long-term business goals.

THE DAWN FOODS STORY

Dawn Foods is a wholesale distributor and manufacturer of baking ingredients that has been in business since 1920. When their initiative began, they had several big challenges to solve, which included:

• Create a self-serve online ordering apparatus
• Eliminate analog order and customer interaction that is slowing growth
• Capitalize on first-mover advantage by bringing online ordering to their vertical.  

Bob Howland led them on a revolutionary approach and built a tech stack and online ordering interface from scratch using a purpose-built, compose-your-own MACH-based solution where each vendor was individually selected. 

Dawn Foods built a purpose-built ordering system specifically and exclusively for their business needs. By bringing online ordering to the vertical, the change improved not only their customers’ experience but also their internal operations and the industry at large. 

By building a composable solution, internal teams could focus on singular products and functions, allowing rapid iteration while limiting maintenance and upkeep time. Because of this purpose-built solution and workflow, Dawn Foods releases updates to the website and new content approximately every two weeks, delivering a dynamic experience and increasing customer engagement. Their choice of vendor was also crucial in delivering a dynamic and unique UX to their customers, key among them was the choice to use Contentstack as the CMS. 

The solution took the industry by storm and Dawn Foods bottom line saw the impact with results including:

• 80% industry adoption of the digital platform in 4 years
  

It is important to note that for a revolutionary, start-from-scratch approach to be successful, there will need to be complete and total organizational buy-in from the top down. This is a digital transformation route that is exciting, filled with possibilities, and proven to be successful, but because of the large amount of change inherent to the approach, the organization must be ready and willing to embrace the wholesale changes.

THE SUNBELT RENTAL DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION STORY

Sunbelt Rentals is a B2B tool and equipment renter for construction, industrial needs, commercial building, home renovation, and more. They service many types of customers from DIY home renovators to commercial construction firms building shopping centers. 

Pre-transformation, Sunbelt had a digital presence but large parts of the ordering and purchase process took place through analog order forms and in-person visits. The analog systems were ill-suited to serve their varied customer base, were inhibiting operational efficiency, and had to change. Most important was the new platform’s omnichannel capability: the solution had to offer effective connectivity between devices, select store inventories, and rental schedules. 

JP Saini led Sunbelt on an evolutionary approach, improving on an already implemented solution, Adobe Commerce in this instance, for their digital transformation. There are benefits to this approach such as not having to rip-and-replace a solution and it allows for incremental upgrades so the platform grows with your business.

Some of the new capabilities of their hybrid, omnichannel microservices-based, component-driven solution include: 

• Created a massive omnichannel network with an app with all digital touchpoints being connected to brick-and-mortar store location-based inventory
• Location-based, and industry-specific reservations for projects large and small from any touchpoint
• Hyper-personalized experience that uses first-party data to reach out to customers proactively and offer behavior-based promos 
• All orders can be picked up online or scheduled for delivery. Orders can be scheduled for either acquisition method from any device. 
• The Strangler Method allowed component by component to be updated without having to rip and replace

The results of these new features include: 

• 15% cost savings from operational cost
• 30% increase in customer retention 
• 72% increase in top-line revenue in 4 years

CONTACT US TODAY TO DISCOVER THE RIGHT PATH FOR YOU

Corra, a Company of Publicis Sapient, has experience and expertise with all commerce architectures and nearly every major commerce platform. Using our cross-functional, holistic approach to commerce, we will engage with your solution and your big-picture goals to understand where the digital side of your business is now and how we can help it grow.

Contact us today to begin discussions about how we can help you build the digital solution your business needs.