How ASUS Singapore pivoted to a unified B2B2C approach

This post is sponsored by SmartOSC.

Challenge

When it comes to online shopping, there are few things more frustrating than knowing what you want, but not knowing where to find it.

Because of the rapid development of eCommerce in recent years, customers now have high expectations for the online and offline shopping experience, and retailers know how important it is not to let them down. ASUS Singapore is no exception to this rule and quickly recognised digital transformation as vital to maintaining its industry-leading position.

Pre-digital transformation, the company known for offering the world’s best motherboards, PCs, monitors, graphics cards, and routers offered a disjointed retail experience. Customers had to use the ASUS Singapore website to find a vendor outlet for ASUS products, and then visit the store in-person to find the product and buy customisations.

This was a frustrating and time-consuming experience for customers, while the inefficiency of the process ate into the sales of ASUS Singapore’s B2B suppliers, a double whammy of frustration.

So what did ASUS Singapore do? It realised it was time to combine its business and consumers sales into a unified B2B2C commerce approach to enhance the customer experience, improve relationships with local resellers, and drive business growth.

Strategy 

B2B2C, or business-to-business-to-consumer, may be a bit of a mouthful as an abbreviation, but it’s actually a pretty straightforward and tried-and-tested retail distribution model.

It doesn’t mean your customer is a middleman before the product reaches the end consumer (as in B2B), instead, it reaches the end customer by using the marketing visibility and sales power of a business in between.

To give an example, cars are sold in showrooms across the world, so the salespeople have the sales power, but ultimately, consumers will choose which vehicle to purchase based on the reputation of the car brand.

Online B2B2C works well for retailers as they can connect and communicate with service providers and end consumers in one unified system. It also makes tracking sales, orders, stock, and more, much easier by using a solitary platform. Better yet, it’s becoming increasingly popular among consumers and business buyers. The Adobe Digital Economy Index predicted that 2022 would be the first US$1 trillion year for eCommerce, showing the growing potential for B2B2C within the eCommerce landscape.

A key part of the unified B2B2C eCommerce model is unifying the web functions that market to end consumers and resellers. This approach is more cost-effective and has the flexibility to target one segment over another at any given time.

Adobe offers specialist tools that maximise a B2B2C approach, particularly using Adobe Commerce, which has a wide variety of services, and the flexibility to be scaled up as a company grows.

Execution 

ASUS Singapore started its B2B2C transformation by looking for an eCommerce platform that had the power to combine B2B, B2C and advanced eCommerce features into one site. Adobe Commerce was the obvious choice, thanks to its ready-made B2B features and powerful tools to facilitate B2B sales strategies and promotions, as well as an improved B2C experience for both ASUS and customers.

Adobe Commerce offers a highly customisable eCommerce platform with top-of-the-line content management and analytics software, which made it the perfect choice for ASUS’ B2B sales needs. ASUS was also attracted to the scalability of the Adobe Commerce platform, as it expected continued high growth in both the B2B and B2C segments, so a platform with the flexibility to scale up was a must-have.

Adobe Commerce’s corporate sales features, such as multiple buyer sales accounts and options for varied organisational structures, allowed ASUS Singapore to offer customised corporate account management. This included tiered pricing, a custom corporate buyer product catalogue and a “buy-in-bulk” function to make it easy for wholesalers to place large orders, and simple for ASUS to fulfil those orders.

On the other side of the coin, the B2C segment offered consolidated commercial support alongside the web store’s B2B capabilities. One-step checkouts made the purchasing process so much simpler for customers compared to before digital transformation, which significantly boosted sales. The suggested search feature on the website also made finding products much easier for consumers and offered a seamless browsing experience website-wide.

ASUS Singapore also enhanced its management of relationships with resellers, as the Adobe Commerce eCommerce system was integrated with partners’ systems to allow for real-time data syncing. This made managing and evaluating the work of ASUS Singapore’s multiple partners much easier.

After the transformation to a unified B2B2C approach was complete, ASUS Singapore soon realised it needed to unify and activate its data from various sources to provide a personalised consumer experience.

SmartOSC provided the solution by integrating ASUS Singapore’s data pipeline with the Antsomi CDP 365, an AI-enabled customer data platform software, to unify its customer data, analyse data, facilitate insights and implement marketing automation tools to provide its customers with an omni-channel customer experience. Such a solution helps ASUS Singapore to provide better customer engagement and enable hyper-personalisation.

As sales grew it became clear ASUS needed a POS system that could handle the increased volume. SmartOSC recommended ConnectPOS, a Magento plug-in app to synchronise data for orders, products, tax, and inventory, in real-time for both online and offline sales.

Results

The proof was in the pudding, and ASUS very quickly reaped the rewards of unified B2B2C commerce. Page views soared by 31% and the average session duration jumped by 1.39 minutes since launching in June 2019, proving the new site was more attractive to customers and that it had the potential to increase sales.

After the launch of the store in June 2019, ASUS Singapore recorded 56% revenue growth and an average order value of about SG$1,300. This was made possible because of the flexibility of the Adobe Commerce Platform and Antsomi CDP 365.

While it took some forward-thinking and boldness for ASUS Singapore to pivot to a unified B2B2C approach, the results speak for themselves and can be replicated across a wide variety of business sectors.

Find out more about the benefits of the unified B2B2C approach here.