When I start to work with clients, I often get the question, “What are the trends in B2B e-commerce?”
My canned response is, “Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. Let’s talk about your needs.” Then we talk about what makes their customers unique.
My new case study tells the story of how OMNIA Partners built OPUS by first studying its target market to come up with a unique solution.
It illustrates the process of starting with the customer and working to the non-obvious solution. Guided by the CEO, OMNIA Partners:
- Conducted customer research and journey mapping.
- Codified the compliance processes for bidding.
- Built the OPUS e-commerce marketplace platform.
- Enabled sellers to staff agency help desks.
OMNIA Partners is a group purchasing organization that helps municipal government procurement teams get the best price and terms by leveraging prenegotiated contracts with vetted suppliers. In the process of building OPUS, it turned some tried and true B2B e-commerce assumptions on their heads, such as:
- Punch-out (actually) makes things harder. The commonly used “punch-out” model that pushes buyers to the suppliers’ individual websites doesn’t enhance the buyer’s user experience, nor does it create efficiencies because it multiplies the number of user interfaces to learn, which in many cases complicates the procurement process.
- Digital literacy isn’t (actually) the same as expertise. Negotiation skills are more important than web browsing skills. Your users’ comfort with digital tools doesn’t automatically make them effective at following a government agency’s procurement rules. Agencies write the rules but don’t provide the tools. Using a BYO mobile phone to search a million web stores doesn’t make it easier to buy in a compliant way.
Unlike other well-known e-commerce sites, suppliers using OPUS own their transaction data as well as the customer relationship, allowing them to establish long-term relationships with customers. This means suppliers in OMNIA Partners’ network now use OPUS as a channel to the SMB market — all this just in time for a lot of attention on government efficiency.
If you need help understanding how to break away from precanned digital commerce experiences, let’s talk.
Schedule an inquiry or guidance session with me to talk about how you can use our latest case studies to align your strategic commitment to pursue continuously improving business results through technology.
Forrester clients can read Efficiency For Small Government Procurement: The OMNIA Partners E-Commerce Platform.
Forrester clients can also read my other case studies of business leaders driving organizations of all sizes toward digitalizing their unique value proposition:
