Medical supply distributor launches purchasing portal in less than
30 days, becoming Salesforce B2B Commerce trailblazer
A seamless, easy shopping experience is no longer a luxury — for B2B customers, it’s an expectation. E-commerce companies have set a high bar for customer experience for years. And now, B2B buyers expect an Amazon-like fluid customer experience when they shop for their businesses online.
Building an e-commerce platform is an undertaking that’s usually slow, tedious, and costly. But Ovation Medical, a U.S.-based orthopedic and podiatry products distributor, was able to bring a powerful Salesforce B2B Commerce storefront to market in just 30 days.
A Salesforce B2B Commerce purchasing portal
Client:
Ovation Medical
Type of work:
Managed Software
as a Service
Industry:
E-Commerce and Retail
Technology and Platforms:
B2B Commerce on Lightning Experience
Background
Results achieved
“Most of our business comes from repeat orders, but in our previous system, our sales reps were spending most of their time manually inputting up to $10,000 in orders a day, instead of developing new business, our team was putting in orders all day long.”
Erik Rost
Vice President of Sales at Ovation Medical
Provide customers with a full range of products in a portal that’s easy to use
Shift focus to drive incremental business
Free up sales reps to engage in meaningful conversations about new products that help customers
Streamline reordering for repeat customers
Develop custom features to complement the out-of-box functionality of the Salesforce B2B Commerce platform
Match the platform’s functionality with Ovation’s unique order flows
“We’re the most innovative braces and support company in the industry: We have innovative products, compelling strategies, and the best reps out there. Now, we have an innovative commerce platform to match that.”
Erik Rost
Vice President of Sales at Ovation Medical
After understanding Ovation’s unique goals, the Forte Group team worked to integrate the self-service shopping functionality without disrupting Ovation’s existing order fulfillment process.
Working together, Ovation, Salesforce and Forte Group’s cross-functional teams built the following features into the platform in less than 30 days:
The automated sales process for repeat business.
To cut order processing actions down to the minimum for the sales reps, the Forte Group team focused on automating existing order flow. Since Ovation manages more than 500 active product items coming in different variations of sizes and colors, automation enables customers to place orders and perform slight order modifications instantly without calling. For the customers new to the portal, all it takes to negotiate pricing options is a registration request and a follow-up by a sales rep — from there, the reordering is streamlined.
Custom “Order Now” page.
Due to the practice of reordering the same set of items, adopted by Ovation’s customers, the company needed hassle-free order placement possible with no involvement required from the sales team. The B2B Commerce-native “Lists” feature provided an ideal foundation for enhanced functionality like the “Order Now” page. On this page, registered customers have instant access to their previous orders with individual pricing already applied.
Order data integration.
Prior to launching its B2B purchasing portal, Ovation used an integration between Salesforce CRM and an inventory management system Fishbowl. Forte Group adapted it to the platform to keep the order fulfillment process uninterrupted with the introduction of B2B Commerce. The Forte Group team also built several customizations to preserve the standard order processing on the platform’s back-end.
Custom order flow.
To solve the issue of switching between different apps to access the same data, Ovation needed to convert B2B orders into Salesforce “opportunities.” Forte Group engineers implemented features that facilitated a smooth order handling process to meet this goal. Orders placed on the B2B Commerce platform appeared in Salesforce CRM as closed with the status “Opportunity,” allowing for automated sales pipeline monitoring. Following the confirmation, orders flow from the new portal into Fishbowl for fulfillment.
I thought the timeframe would be a challenge, but the Forte team managed expectations, was always available
and was completely committed to deploying our platform, we were all connected and on the same page, which created a great, collaborative vibe.”
Erik Rost
Vice President of Sales at Ovation Medical
Smooth integrations between the B2B commerce storefront and order processing in the Salesforce CRM enabled sales representatives to ramp up their productivity by 2x, managing up to 400 customer accounts per representative simultaneously.
Between 30-40 percent of the portal’s feature implementation was custom, resulting in a frictionless and streamlined buying process and a user-friendly quick reorder for registered customers.
Being the pioneers in launching an integrated and customized Salesforce-based B2B Commerce project, Ovation Medical achieved an unprecedented acceleration of delivery — 30 days after an initial roadmap discussion, Ovation Medical welcomed its first online order on the new platform.
Multiple integrations and customizations between sales and order fulfillment software eliminated manual data entry. They accelerated processing time by as much as 200 percent, freeing up the sales team to reallocate their resources and focus on business growth.
