Success Story: B2B E-Commerce Shop from DIGITALDRINK

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White labeling in B2B e-commerce

From a B2B commerce perspective, there is something to be said for looking behind the scenes of white label solutions. Because it revolves around efficiency, structured information distribution – and essential foundations for the scalability of technologies in e-commerce.

From: Sylvain Rayé | Diglin GmbH

Anyone who wants to operate an online store needs the technology for logistics and payment transactions. To the outside world, however, the system should look and function in such a way that it fits in with the CI of the company and the brand.

One backend – many frontends

As an example, let’s say you have a hotel chain. Then you probably wouldn’t want every single house in your chain buying their drinks separately each. Because then you can better negotiate the prices. At the same time, the houses should still be allowed to order individually. After all, there are small and large houses in different locations that have different needs.

The problem is that you run a hotel chain, not a beverage store – and certainly not an online store. And you don’t just have one supplier for your beverages either, you also want to supply your homes with other products via the store. Besides, you don’t want to deal with logistics. Not for convenience, but because it would be too expensive.

The solution: you find someone who is willing to do all this for you and organize it for you. SwissDrink is a Swiss beverage cooperative. In collaboration with DigitalDrink Switzerland, the company supplies various customers at B2B level. These include beverage manufacturers, commercial kitchens, caterers and bar operators.

SwissDrink – White Label B2B Commerce runs smoothly

SwissDrink’s white label solution offers every member company in the cooperative an online store with exactly the right content, at the right prices, in the ideal packaging form. Each employee of a member company can receive individual access. He does not have to leave the corporate environment to place the order, even if orders from various vendors and suppliers are processed in the background. Through the specific use of the B2B commerce solution OroCommerce, customers at SwissDrink benefit from outstanding ease of use, a high degree of personalization and efficient order processing.

Advantage through doing nothing

Advantage for member companies: They can completely dispense with their own online store development and still have an easy-to-use ordering system optimized for their beverage orders. Conditions, available products and container shapes can not only be defined globally for the respective member company, but can also be assigned individually to each user account.

For example, larger hotels in a hotel chain would have their standard requirements already preselected in the order basket – this speeds up the ordering process enormously.

In the background, DigitalDrink and SwissDrink take care of the technical provision, administration and invoicing, partnerships, service expansion and even the adaptation of product groups.

This is because the member companies in the cooperative have nothing to do with software programming and order processing. They benefit from the performance of the OroCommerce software used, which provides a uniform technical solution in the background, but can be played out highly individually in the foreground. With the pleasant advantage that the integrated solutions are potentially also available to all member companies. You are also automatically up to date with the latest technology

Individual accesses are used to manage specific customer authorizations: From preselected products in the shopping cart to the possibility of individual invoicing. ©Diglin

In the login area, customers see exactly the goods that match their company in terms of brand, container and price structure. Order processing can range from non-variable quantities to custom invoicing, depending on who is logged in. Nevertheless, everything is controlled from only one backend. ©Diglin

The accounting department orders with

The option of individual accounting means that internal accounting can be adapted to the existing business structures of the member companies. Invoice addresses, payment processing, cost centers and release procedures can be included in all ordering steps. The place of order also plays a subordinate role. Employees can order from the warehouse or beer yard, and the system works across devices. So an order can start in the wine cellar and be finished at the desk.

This is what white label benefits the provider

The advantages of such a solution for the member companies are obvious: they do not have to set up a store and logistics structure, save the technical effort for secure payment processing, work with their own structures and have an easy-to-use and efficient supply chain.

And SwissDrink?

Of course, developing an e-commerce solution of this complexity is not a one-click task. With the help of the e-commerce agency Diglin, SwissDrink develops all functions exactly once in exactly one place. After that, SwissDrink will be able to provide suitable access to each of its cooperative members and also to each service provider.

Technically easy?!

Process invoices and forward the necessary information to the beverage distributor. The latter then takes over the delivery of the products to the end customer.

The automatic integration of SwissDrink’s e-commerce system into the logistics of the beverage distributors means that the underlying organizational structures can also be used across the board. This includes Assigned delivery dates for each customer, which makes it possible to optimize delivery routes and thus makes orders easier to plan.

However, SwissDrink’s task in this specific case is more complex. The central task here is the handling between different ERP systems (multi-input) and the different store front-ends (multi-output). Everything stands and falls with the exact clarification of the customer’s needs, the choice of the right software and the perfect elaboration and implementation. SwissDrink has chosen OroCommerce, a dedicated open source software for B2B commerce requirements. This also allowed the combination with a proprietary middleware solution, which mediates the processes between different existing solutions.

Win-Win-Win?

White label solutions fit very well for complex B2B scenarios. They are well-suited for companies that supply different customers with different CIs, products, product groups and contractual agreements as brand store providers, or that distribute different brands themselves as parent companies. This background gives the technology far-reaching significance for the development in B2B commerce. Because when the above conditions are met, there is a large gap between the funds used for development and the scalable benefits – signs of the efficiency of the funds and thus the faster ROI. The use of highly adaptive open source software also reduces the risk of development gaps and dependencies on individual software manufacturers.

Background: OroCommerce is a B2B-specific e-commerce software based on open source. It is technically highly flexible and, thanks to its modular structure, can be used in a wide variety of business use cases. www.orocommerce.com

The author

Sylvain Rayé is a business owner and business analyst at Diglin. He brings 20 years of experience implementing B2C and B2B eCommerce projects for online retailers.

This article was made possible by Diglin GmbH, a software development and implementation agency for online stores. It mainly implements agile open source solutions with the aim of giving its customers more flexibility in shaping their online business. www.diglin.ch