Why manufacturers need modern ecommerce portals
By Jerry Chen
Put yourself in the shoes of a sales partner. It’s 8pm on a Thursday right before a long weekend, and they’re working tirelessly to quote a big project. They’re racing to answer their client faster than their competition, because they know that the first responder has the best shot at winning.
Work is flowing, they’re more productive than ever as the weekend approaches. But there’s a hiccup. They need pricing for a product that their client changed the options for at the last minute. The manufacturer’s office is closed, and the last price list they got doesn’t have the adders, and is grossly outdated.
They have no choice but to wait until Monday. They lost their first mover advantage. This is just one of the many scenarios where not having a self-serve ecommerce portal will cost you.
What is an Ecommerce Portal?
I want to clearly distinguish between a “Portal” and an “Ecommerce Portal.” Both are portals in the sense that they require an authorized login, but that’s where the similarities end. A traditional portal is a content system with static file downloads. An ecommerce portal is a working tool connected to live product data — and the difference shows up in five places:
Traditional portals
A content system with static file downloads.
Ecommerce portals
A working tool connected to live product data.
Functionality
Value for sales partners
Low
TraditionalOnce they’ve downloaded the files, there’s little reason to ever come back.
High
EcommerceOne place to check pricing, configure, and quote projects at any hour — plus order status and inventory. Instant answers 24/7 free up both your reps and your internal team for higher-value work.
Security
You don’t always know when someone leaves, so they keep their access — and your price file — even after they go work for a competitor.
Single sign-on tied to their work email. When they leave their company and lose that email, they lose access to your portal automatically.
Ease of use
One more login for your partners to keep track of — which means they likely won’t use your portal at all.
Single sign-on with Microsoft and Google for a frictionless login, and an add-to-cart experience simple enough to need no training.
Data
No idea when people are looking at your price lists and documents, and no idea which products or options are popular.
Full visibility into who is logging in, what products they’re looking at, and which specific options are being priced and quoted.
What are the costs of not having an ecommerce portal?
The top lighting manufacturers care deeply about every stop in the buying journey, not just when they get a quote request. That’s why the big name companies all have home-grown self-service capabilities, because they understand the high cost of not having it.
-
Cost of lost opportunities
A seamless buyer journey is crucial. Even with a superior product, a slow response time can lead to lost opportunities, especially in the competitive lighting market where many products meet the application’s needs.
-
Operational Drag
Without a self-serve portal, your team is bogged down by repetitive, low-value requests—like pricing inquiries or part number corrections. Manufacturers using an automated ecommerce portal free up capacity for more creative, value-added work, boosting employee engagement and improving customer satisfaction.
-
Security Risk
Relying on full price list files is risky, as you lose control over where they go. Departing sales partners can easily take the entire price file and login credentials. Modern e-commerce portals use 2FA and SSO to automatically revoke access when a user leaves their company.
-
Lost Data Insights
Relying on static price files hinders user experience for both sales partners and internal teams, and sacrifices crucial usage data. Without understanding product and option popularity or user navigation, you only see the final sale. Given the cost of new product launches, leveraging this data is vital for future product development.
-
Compounding disadvantages
The disadvantages of lost opportunities, operational drag, and lost data will compound the longer you don’t act on improving these areas.
On the other hand, the advantages of having an ecommerce portal will compound for your competitors. Manufacturers with an ecommerce portal will win more opportunities, scale faster and more efficiently with automation, and have a higher hit rate on new products because of data.
As businesspeople, you’re all familiar with the power of compound interest. Apply the same concept to compounding advantages and imagine the gap in competitiveness 2-3 years from now.
Build vs Buy - What is the best way to catch up?
For the manufacturers looking to catch up, they must choose whether to build or buy an ecommerce portal. Here are some key points to consider in this decision:
- Building in-house is a massive project with high execution and adoption risk that grows if software isn’t your core competency. You can drastically minimize this risk by buying off the shelf + added customization.
- Consider the total cost of ownership. The cost to build not only includes your time, developer hours, and iteration, but also scope creep, future maintenance, and upgrade costs.
- Software providers have full teams dedicated to improving their product. If you can’t dedicate resources to constantly improve your in-house portal, you will always be behind on the frontier of customer experience.
What to look for in an ecommerce portal solution?
Given lighting’s unique needs, you’ll definitely want to look for a solution that is built specifically for lighting manufacturers.
Not all solutions are suitable for the configurable nature of your products. This rules out solutions like Shopify and Magento that are designed around flat SKUs, which make it a nightmare to manage given how many part number permutations can be made.
A solution built for lighting should be built from the ground up with intuitive configurators and configurator admin workflows. It should be easy to manage your ever-changing catalog of specs, prices, and products.
You’ll also want to look for affordable, manufacturer-friendly contracts. Don’t be fooled by the initial price tag, as ecommerce platforms that are not built for configurable ordering guides, will need additional setup and customization.
For example, Shopify B2B ecommerce starts at $30K per year for the base package and will require at least another $30K per year for custom apps just to make it work for your products & workflow.
Finally, the solution should be customizable to meet your brand guidelines, including color, logo, and fonts.
Take this to your demos
Four things to check before you sign
01
Built for configurable products
02
Catalog you can actually maintain
03
Manufacturer-friendly contracts
Shopify B2B, realistically
04
Your brand, not theirs
New ecommerce platform designed for lighting manufacturers
In today’s rapidly evolving market, an ecommerce portal is no longer a luxury but a necessity for manufacturers to remain competitive. By bridging the gap between sales partners and product data, ecommerce portals turn slow, costly interactions into 24/7 self-service advantages.
Over the last 2 years, Electrify has been deep in the daily operations of catalog management, pricing updates, quoting headaches, and spec sheet changes. And we’ve developed cutting edge solutions for each of these challenges, starting with ecommerce.
Electrifyconnect.com was built to make ecommerce portal software available and affordable to all lighting manufacturers.