Artificial intelligence helps businesses automate manual sales orders that land in their inbox
Introduction
We are living in uncertain times. Both private consumers and businesses have had to adjust to a new reality in recent years. A global pandemic and growing geopolitical tensions are affecting the way we do business, creating unpredictability that can be difficult to navigate. Partially declining demand in certain sectors, high interest rates, and rising prices have made it necessary for businesses to focus on cost-effective measures to survive and remain attractive to customers, partners, and employees. One of the most effective measures is investing in online trading solutions - both in B2B and B2C. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the development of e-commerce and the trend is still growing, although there is an impact and decline in consumption due to the current geopolitical tensions(1).
Looking at the analyses from recent years, it is still clear that e-commerce solutions have gained ground in the B2C landscape. B2C companies that invest in e-commerce solutions are also the ones that are performing the best(2). In B2B commerce, however, there is a tendency to use email in transactions and more and more companies are realizing that e-commerce, as we know it from successful B2C cases, is not necessarily the best and most lucrative place to start if you want to develop and digitize your business.
Why can't we just copy the best from B2C to B2B?
In the last 10 years, the trend has been to recommend that B2B companies should copy the strategies from B2C sales, especially when it comes to e-commerce. Many B2B companies have invested large sums in digital platforms and other solutions to digitize their sales, with the conviction that success could be achieved by pouring enough time, money, and resources into these platforms and by enticing customers to use new channels. However, in recent years, many, despite their willingness to invest in the usual digital solutions, have not seen the adoption from customers that was expected and hoped for. It has been shown that B2B commerce differs from B2C sales in many ways, and that a simple copy of B2C strategies will not lead to success in a B2B context.
The success of e-commerce in the B2C area is largely due to companies interacting with individual consumers. B2B commerce, on the other hand, often involves complex, specialized products, longer purchasing processes, multiple decision-makers, and larger transaction volumes. Fundamentally, B2B commerce also faces a completely different challenge as businesses deal with other businesses, which means that both business logic and IT systems must be taken into account for a transaction to be completed between parties.
Although trade in the classic B2B context is complex, there are B2B companies that have experienced strong growth in their e-commerce turnover, while most others can only dream of 20% of total turnover. This is due to some very clear common characteristics that determine a company's ability to generate significant revenue from e-commerce:
In successful stories, the following often apply:
If the company covers a large share of your customers' purchasing needs, you will often find it easier to convince customers to shop with you via your webshop and not your competitor's. Although the above applies to some types of B2B companies, the reality is quite different for the vast majority of companies. Here, as a supplier, you are one among many that the customer does business with. For these types of companies, an email is often the simplest and uncomplicated "integration" between their own purchasing system and the supplier's system. Not only in connection with placing orders, but especially in connection with, for example, price inquiries, which are often sent to multiple suppliers. Thus, over 50% of all buyers used email as a channel in 2022(3).
The handling of orders, price inquiries, complaints, and whatever else may land in the sales and service representative's inbox takes up a large part of their time - time that can be used for value-creating activities if the company is willing to digitize and automate those parts of the process that can be handled by artificial intelligence. Dansk Industri is aware of their customers' challenges in digitizing the human-intensive channel, email:
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"Email is often an overlooked transaction channel where there is potential for Danish companies, both in terms of customer experience but also in terms of streamlining the business and use of resources. This is precisely on the agenda for many Danish companies these days. Both because Danish companies lack hands and because there is an extra focus on costs in 2023." Mie Bilberg, Senior Consultant, Dansk Industri - E-Commerce.
But what solutions should these companies implement to not lose ground? And what does it look like if you have ambitions to grow without having to use too many resources in sales and service to scale the company's activities?
Autonomous Commerce
A new product category within B2B commerce technology is Autonomous Commerce. The fact that the product category itself is new does not mean that the problem being solved is new. We have simply reached a stage where the technologies within the category are developed and mature enough to define a trend - and thus a product category - that is here to stay. Under the overarching concept of Autonomous Commerce, we find artificial intelligence - a groundbreaking technology within software, which in this context can read and understand incoming emails, documents, and images, among other things.
When it comes to the classic handling of purchase orders that land in the inbox, the software can solve the tasks that B2B companies all over the world currently use thousands of working hours and millions of dollars on every day. Artificial intelligence can be used for everything from sorting emails and gaining insight into customer behavior, to placing orders using recognition of information such as quantity of items, price, delivery date, and delivery details, which are automatically sent to one's ERP.
In addition to improving the customer experience by handling orders in real-time rather than waiting for the average time of 42 hours per request (B2B), this frees up time for individual sales and service employees to focus on value- and relationship-building activities, such as upselling or handling more complex orders. It also allows companies with growth potential to begin their growth journey without having to hire service employees to handle manual repetitive processes that can be performed using artificial intelligence today.
AI-powered co-pilot for employees
Many email orders can be fully automated with the help of artificial intelligence, but as previously mentioned, there will still be inquiries, orders, complaints, etc. that require human intervention. In a B2B context, in particular, there are often many requirements for which information must be available before an order can be completed, which contributes to the high administrative burden seen in many companies. It may be that an order requires attached documentation, the customer is entitled to a discount after an agreement, or that the amounts traded are too high to use webshops without human validation, handling, and contact. Between supplier and customer, many emails can thus be sent back and forth before all criteria are met, and here artificial intelligence can help reduce the time from first touchpoint to final sale. As the seller's co-pilot, artificial intelligence can identify missing information, look up in the seller's ERP and CRM, suggest alternatives, and generate responses to the buyer - all without requiring the buyer to change behavior.
A paradigm shift
The implementation of Autonomous Commerce requires a paradigm shift away from the traditional and familiar approach to digitizing individual activities or processes towards a more holistic and integrated approach that considers the end-to-end process. Unlike more traditional software solutions on the market such as Kofax and other mapping-based document solutions, with Autonomous Commerce, there is no need to configure individual documents or customers - artificial intelligence takes care of it all. This allows companies to go much further than just automating orders from a small part of their customer base, as seen in EDI solutions. It enables the digitization of a sales process from beginning to end and in close to real-time. From the moment an order lands in the inbox, data is extracted from the document and email, order data is validated in the ERP system, and the customer receives an order confirmation, typically 20-30 seconds pass. Of course, the degree of automation can be chosen depending on the needs and maturity of the company.
In addition to thinking beyond the familiar and traditional solutions, you must also consider the digitalisation journey you expect be on over the next few years. Ask the questions: What is the ambition? Where do you expect customers to be? Do you expect digitalisation to be a cornerstone of the overall growth ambition? What are your competitors doing to distinguish themselves? Autonomous Commerce is a common denominator in the answers to these questions.
If you are interested in learning more about Autonomous Commerce and how Go Autonomous can help your organisation, please feel free to reach out to us so we can help you assess the potential in your organization.