B2B commerce and content management: pushing boundless digital innovation

Are you looking for a solution that allows you to build stronger relationships with B2B buyers? How about making data-driven content decisions and implementing personalization at scale? Is it important to you to provide consistent delivery of rich and engaging product information across all touchpoints?  

If you’ve answered yes to the questions above, Optimizely is positioned to help you succeed! Optimizely has released tools that allow Content Management (formerly known as Content Cloud) and B2B Commerce to work together even easier than before. The key ingredient is a C# API SDK that allows Content Management to leverage the B2B Commerce APIs in a headless manner to expose B2B data and capabilities within the CMS. Our customers now have access to the best features and functionality of both tools to deliver seamless B2B digital experiences. 

Value of content management 

Content management is a larger-scale CMS tool that enables you to increase your omnichannel engagement and conversions by delivering exactly the right content at the right time and place.  

• Create once and publish anywhere: Manage content centrally, use templates and layouts to maintain brand consistency and support multi-site management.  
• Easy to use: Streamlined interfaces for full page layouts or simple blocks of text, drag and drop components on your canvas, and preview across multiple environments.  
• Work together: Workflow, approval, versioning and security for governance and compliance. Ability to collaborate using Projects functionality to group related content, comment and share and review all with your Go-Live in mind.  
• Get your message out: SEO best practices are baked-in to your publishing, launches multiple sites from the same place, shares content and messages for re-use, supports multi-lingual content and translation processes or integrations, all managed and tracked from one source.  

Value of B2B 

B2B Commerce Cloud is a tool built for complex B2B processes. It includes native B2B functionality without third-party add-ons, and it supports complex relationships, personas and approval workflows.  

All-in-one functionality: Create complex, multi-tier pricing aligned with customer specific personas. Leverage order approval workflows to ensure easy buying process for customers. Robust search functionality allows for the boosting of results to help customers find information quickly.  

Mobile app: Branded native mobile app is available to ensure customers can research and order on the go and in the field.  

Architected for performance: SaaS based platform that is natively designed to work alongside an ERP. B2B Commerce offers a straightforward upgrade path so you can take advantage of the latest features and functionality.  

How customers will benefit from the combined power of Content Management and B2B Commerce 

We’ll look at this from two different perspectives.  

Before we dive in, let’s make sure to acknowledge that B2B has Spire CMS built into the B2B platform. And it’s important to know that there are no plans to remove Spire from B2B Commerce Cloud. It’s a good fit for some customers that are small to mid-size and don’t require the more robust CMS capabilities that Content Management offers.  

But where it can fit well… 

If you’re an enterprise level B2B company – it could be good fit. They are often interested in pursuing a content strategy approach to allow you to develop a deeper customer relationship and brand affinity in the digital world. And they typically have larger marketing teams, complex content, a global approach or multiple websites to manage.  

If you’re a Manufacturing and Distribution customer who has focused on Content Management – you also may be a good fit. You’re likely looking at (or using) Content Management to engage your customers who now want to use that digital channel to drive transactions, and thus, revenue. Complex products and a large customer base yield the need for specific B2B commerce features – such as customer specific pricing, vendor managed inventory, quotes/RFQs, order management, etc.  

A quick peek at the architecture 

From Content Management, leverage the B2B functionality via the API SDK. Manage website content (non-product) in Content Management and bring in the product catalog and commerce logic from the B2B Commerce Cloud platform.  

Take a look at a summary breakdown of how you would take advantage of the combined tools. 

The power of your website is boundless with this combination of best-in-breed tools. Contact us if you have interest in this solution and want to chat further.