Preparing to Build a B2B Portal: A Step-by-Step Plan 12/2/2021 Creating a B2B portal or B2B marketplace is an important step in a company's growth. In this article, we outline a step-by-step action plan for preparing for a fast and effective B2B system implementation.
How to prepare a business for digital transformation. Part 2
A practical plan for preparing to build a B2B portal: goals, metrics, team, requirements, and project launch.
- The steps for preparing to build a B2B portal are as follows
- Step 1. Calculating the unit economics of the entire project
- Step 2. Building high-level goals and an Impact Map
- Step 3. Breaking goals down into tasks
Step 1. Calculating the unit economics of the entire project
Step 3. Breaking goals down into tasks
Step 4. Selecting the people who can be decision makers
Step 5. Starting development
Reading time: 4 min. In the first part of the article, we discussed common misconceptions about digitizing B2B business. The main conclusion: customer-side preparation for digital transformation starts with setting goals. You need to define the company's goals, quantitative and qualitative metrics, and break them down into tasks. This requires expertise and effort. First of all, it is worth thinking about developing your own team and building internal expertise.
And, of course, try to build a relationship with the IT contractor so that together you focus not on development for its own sake, but on a product where every feature brings you closer to the business goal. So, we have discussed common misconceptions about digitizing B2B business. If you think that the key to success is a detailed requirements document and moving routine actions online, the result can be very disappointing. Business does not need that kind of preparation!
The main part of customer-side preparation for digital transformation is goal setting. You need to define the company's overall goals, identify quantitative and qualitative metrics, and break them down into tasks. This requires expertise and effort. First of all, it is worth thinking about developing your own team in this direction and building internal expertise.
And, of course, try to build a relationship with the IT contractor that lets you focus together not on development for its own sake, but on a product where every feature brings you closer to the business goal.
Step 1. Calculating the unit economics of the entire project
One of the new rows will be the hypothesis "B2B Portal Development," and you will need to assess how it affects the "Revenue" and Gross Profit columns. You can see an example of a simple XLS unit calculator and instructions for it here. If the unit calculator shows that even a 0.01% change in conversion will produce a meaningful financial result, then improvements should start with the narrowest points in the sales funnel. And it is not certain that business process automation will be what drives this - it may be better to optimize something else.
Step 2. Building high-level goals and an Impact Map
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The Impact Mapping method helps clearly define project goals in line with the overall business goals, broken down by role.
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To do this, you need to build a mind map with answers to four key questions. Why is this product needed?
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What business problem should it solve?
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Who influences the achievement of this goal? What can he do?
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What specific steps does he need to take within those goals?
Assess where AI can deliver impact in your process
Step 3. Breaking goals down into tasks
Choose the metrics we will track as part of the process and use to guide the team.
Define the iteration cadence - the shortest possible period for delivering new value in the product.
As a rule, this depends on bureaucratic constraints.
If the product owner is available and spends a lot of time on the project, these can be one-week sprints.
But if the functionality is complex or the client has to keep stepping away from the project, then one cycle takes two weeks or more.
The cycle is determined by how we can deliver value and measure it
For example, using quantitative metrics: the number of automated operations; the number of operations moved to the new system; the number of interactions without an operator; the percentage of B2B portal or B2B marketplace users out of the organization's total customer base (sample values: out of 2,000 customers, 0 people currently use the portal, and our goal is 1,000 people).
We have listed quantitative metrics, and they need to be balanced with qualitative ones: the number of repeat transactions (a customer struggled to place an order once and will not use it again); the time it takes to complete one request, purchase, or transaction; the adoption rate; customer satisfaction; and willingness to recommend the company (NPS).
Step 4. Selecting the people who can be decision makers
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These are the owners not only of the product itself, but also of adjacent systems.
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Usually, a B2B portal is closely integrated with other information systems (ERP, CRM, etc.), and someone must be assigned responsibility for working with them.
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At the same time, all decision makers must focus on one common metric, all departments must be interested in that metric, and all of them must be physically involved in the project.
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The product owner is responsible for collecting these metrics and discussing and approving them with the team.
Step 5. Starting development
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It often happens that if a system, for example, consists of six parts, all parts start being implemented one after another: first, second, third, and so on.
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That is not right - you need to work on them simultaneously and try to build an MVP, that is, a system that can be used as early as possible.
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Let it be a very simple implementation with major assumptions, but in a month it will be refined, because full feedback needs to be received as early as possible. Development is carried out with cycles in mind
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Deming's cycle with regular review of goals and metrics. And no requirements document.
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As you can see, we support focusing on business metrics when planning development.
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More useful information about B2B portals, how we build them, and the problems we solve is available on our "B2B Portal Development" page.
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