DCKAP – Simplifying eCommerce For Distributors to Drive Sales & Profits

For the past ten years or so, many distributors have explored, and traveled, the eCommerce journey, traveling the path to bring new services to their customers and in the hopes of accelerated revenue.

While the percent of sales coming from electrical distributor websites is low (low single digits according to the latest NAED PAR report), many report that is a business differentiator and helps provide a self-service option for their customers … either for pricing information, inventory updates, getting spec sheets or other needs. More and more customers EXPECT companies to offer a robust web offering.

As distributors have gone done their eCommerce, and even more broadly, digital transformation, path they recognize that connecting “bolt-on” solutions to their ERP system can be “challenging”. Whether it is eCommerce, CRM, marketing automation, text management services and other systems, a myriad of systems to talk to each other can take much IT time (and business managers pull out their hair with trying to understand why!)

ElectricalTrends’ newest advertiser, DCKAP, helps companies, and primarily distributors solve this integration problem. They help simplify eCommerce for distributors so that companies can have better, and more profitable, relationships with their customers.

I encourage you to learn more and forward this posting to your eCommerce / IT teams and have them reach out for a demo because this simple tool can save many man hours as improve key processes.

Here’s some insights from DCKAP …

Simplifying eCommerce For Distributors

We have worked with hundreds of distributors. Nearly every time we work with them, we see the same challenge. Commerce is a huge project and can often get overwhelming: especially when it comes to picking the right technology. Some choose to trust brand perceptions and go for one of the top five names in the market. However, if the product isn’t the right fit for their specific needs and circumstances, they can find themselves regretting that choice down the line– though not before spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and man-hours.

Should they continue to invest to make it work? Or should they look for a better fit and avoid the sunk cost fallacy (i.e.—as J.R. Tapper, President at Rigid Hitch Inc., puts it —“throwing away good money after the bad”)?

Or better yet, can they avoid this situation from the get-go?

The B2B customer journey is complex and varies across sectors. The challenge that many distributors face is the need to customize existing technology products. This might become expensive both in terms of money and time. In especially unlucky circumstances, it may not pan out the way they want it to be.

This is why we simplify commerce for distributors. It does not have to be this difficult.

Change is inevitable. But in the last few years, the way B2B selling works has changed at a very fast pace, with more companies selling online.

Today’s B2B buyers are digital natives. They expect to shop for B2B products in the same way they do for B2C products. They want multiple channels, speed, easy access, updates in real-time, great experiences after they purchase, and the list goes on. In the electrical distribution sector, they also expect to be able to see their pricing and have access to product spec sheets along with your inventory availability.

Customer experience is becoming more important for the distribution industry, and the bar is going higher. It is important to understand how your customers want to interact and why.

Many distributors are updating their legacy systems to improve their ecommerce technology and strategies. To win the game, it is important for B2B distributors to know the latest eCommerce trends.

At DCKAP, we build products for distributors and offer solutions that help them grow their profits.

Why Distributors?

In today’s economy, distributors are very important because they connect manufacturers with contractors, industrial buyers, and other customers. They are in charge of getting products from the manufacturers and getting them to contractors and end users.

Distributors want to make transactions simpler and more enjoyable for customers but the B2B customer journey is more complex than the B2C customer journey.

Customer-specific pricing, quantity discounting, project vs stock business, the number of SKUs that make up a project, project pricing, backorders, and account management are key areas posing a challenge to distributors today.

This changed with the pandemic as eCommerce sales skyrocketed: with two-thirds of B2B sellers reporting a minimum of 25% growth, per one report. To reach customers unable to come to their branches, more distributors began selling online. They did so both on their own sites and via marketplaces. Distributors in sectors like JanSan and Electrical did manage both, being deemed as essential businesses.

The market offered many solutions to streamline business processes and help sell better. Yet, an overwhelming majority were not designed keeping distributors in mind.

DCKAP and Distributors 

We’ve been around for 17 years and have seen a lot of these changes in the eCommerce space. We’ve made it our mission to simplify commerce for distributors.

We have partnered with hundreds of distributors to help reach a wider customer base with the support of products and services crafted especially for them. This has helped them to improve customer experience and boost their revenue.

At the forefront of these efforts is DCKAP Integrator, our ERP integration platform. DCKAP Integrator helps our clients save thousands of hours of manual work, create smoother workflows and make better decisions backed by accurate data.

The DCKAP Integrator connects your ERP system to any number of business applications—including your ecommerce platform, CRM, EDI, PIM, and marketplaces like 3M to name a few. Depending on the integration, it can provide real-time customer data, product data, inventory data, order data, financial data, and more.

It is also platform and system agnostic.

DCKAP Integrator can connect to various ERPs like Epicor Eclipse and Prophet 21, Infor, Oracle, and NetSuite, to name a few.

We’re thrilled to have helped simplify commerce for over 100 distributors across various sectors. This includes electrical too. We’ve worked with names such as Robertson Lighting, Sunrise Electrical Supply, (an IMARK Electrical member), and Province Electrical (a Canadian Schneider Electric distributor) helping them save costs and improve business insights.

On top of that, we have solutions for PIM and Headless that are tailored-made for distributors.

We’ve been offering ecommerce services to improve shopping experiences for more than 17 years. Our ecommerce experts help distributors migrate their legacy systems to newer platforms to level up their ecommerce. These services include implementations for Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento), BigCommerce, and Shopify stores.

Looking ahead: 2023 and beyond

The mantra for 2023 is personalization and building stronger relationships. To be precise, two of the three focus points that a study by Oracle & Mirakl suggested crafting strong, direct ties with B2B buyers and making “B2C-like” shopping experiences.

Profitability depends less on making sales and more on giving customers the service and experience they want, even after the sale has been made. An integrated business model can prevent operational silos, improve customer satisfaction, prevent churn, and help increase revenue growth.

Technology can help you make it there. The right technology will help you thrive.

And we at DCKAP will continue to experiment, craft, and build the right technology solutions to help distributors simplify their commerce.

Your Next Steps

Okay. We know eCommerce can be hard, but it’s necessary, regardless of your size. Small companies need at least an online catalog (and we know resources that can help.)

Want some non-electrical comparisons?

• Check out this article that John Gunderson wrote for HVACR Trends, a joint service of Channel Marketing Group (yes, we’re into the HVAC market) and Dorn Group, that shares insights from Watsco’s eCommerce performance.
• And this article that shares some stats on what eCommerce is according to distributors, key customer features and offers some resources.

Lastly, as mentioned, request a demo from DCKAP (and mention you heard about them from us!) and if we can help with direction and/or resources (even if just a conversation), reach out to me.