How WM Supplies’ new B2B portal can help others boost customer experience

The global pandemic had a huge impact on demand for basic medical products – and Belgium-based WM Supplies wanted to ensure the best support for its customers: hospitals, care homes and centers, medical institutes, pharma wholesalers and more. Following an SAP Business ByDesign implementation led and managed by delaware, WM Supplies invested in an integrated e-commerce B2B portal that responds to its specific business needs, but can easily be adapted for other contexts and industries as well.

Updating a manual and time-consuming process

Previously, the customers of WM Supplies submitted their orders by sending an Excel file via email. This cumbersome way of processing orders is not only time-consuming for customers, it also required manual re-entry by the WM Supplies team – which leaves room for human errors. 

The team at delaware worked closely with WM Supplies, not just to clarify their vision of a tool to automate the ordering process, but to create a feasible technical framework that they could build on, beginning with their needs and processes.

“WM Supplies has experts in functional areas, but no dedicated IT department,” explains Ian Kerkhove, lead developer at delaware. “We worked hard to to build this B2B solution with them – not just for them. We involved people from the business from the very start of this project in order to develop unique features for the product, such as the ability to create multiple users at once, perform product availablity checks and giving WM Supplies’ customers access to their order and invoice history.”

Excellence in customer service

The result of the project is a SaaS application that is designed and built by delaware in collaboration with WM Supplies, but which can be implemented in almost any industry or can be used as a template to expand upon. Here, customers can find all the information they need and create new orders in a few easy steps. As a business, you’ll benefit from fully automated orders, seamless integration into your SAP ERP, lower back-office costs and robust data security. 

“By eliminating the human factor that used to be needed to enter orders into the SAP system, the portal significantly boosts the reliability of the ordering process,” asserts Laurent de Meulenaere, Product owner B2B Portal at delaware. “Even more, the solution empowers customers by offering them insights into the process through track and trace, stock checks and other self-service functionalities. This boosts transparency and reinforces the strong customer relationships that WM Supplies seeks to build.“

Thriving in dynamic times

WM Supplies’ embrace of e-commerce with the new B2B portal doesn’t just streamline its processes and offer greater customer-facing transparency. The solution also increases the company’s agility in the face of changes in demand for its high-urgency goods.

Today, between 25 and 30% of the orders come in via the new B2B portal, and the WM Supplies team is reporting lower costs and plenty of positive feedback from its customers.

Ready to take your business to the next level and benefit from improved customer and supplier relationships, automated processes and lower costs with our B2B portal? Get in touch with our team of experts.