Integrating Systems With Brady Berhman - CEO of PunchOut2GO

Unknown Speaker : 0:07

So welcome to the hard truth about b2b commerce. I'm your co host Isaiah Bollinger from trellis. And I'm here with Tim.

Unknown Speaker : 0:17

How you doing? I'm Isaiah is co host Timothy Peterson and the b2b and b2c e commerce guy for the last 20 years.

Unknown Speaker : 0:26

Welcome. Good to have you here. Absolutely. And we're excited to announce the official second episode of the podcast with our new sponsor, Brady, the CEO of punch out to go So, punch AlphaGo is officially going to be sponsoring this, this podcast and they're one of the leaders in b2b e commerce. A lot of people don't know about them because they're kind of behind the scenes in the process, but they're a global b2b integration company specializing in connecting ecommerce platforms. With procurement stub management and enterprise resource planning applications, allowing companies around the world to streamline purchasing processes and transact electronically, so they have one of the leading iPad technologies that seamlessly links business obligations to automate the flow of purchasing data and reduces integration complexities for punch out catalogs, electronic purchase orders, invoices and other b2b sales order automation documents in order to accelerate business results. So we've used them successfully a lot of major companies have used them successfully they're they're like really someone that I think you absolutely should talk to. If you're investing in b2b e commerce regardless of your situation. I can promise they're they're always the best fit, but I can promise you should definitely talk to them to find out so it can't wait to learn more. Yeah, absolutely. And with that being said, Brady, I'll let you introduce yourself because I can't do justice. So

Unknown Speaker : 1:59

yeah, thank you. So much as a thank you, Tim, appreciate the invite here. We're very proud to sponsor your efforts here. Yes, my name is Brady Berman on the CEO of punch out to go. We're in the business of making commerce to procurement integrations easy, right? So helping b2b practitioners, if you will to be discharged. Manufacturers connect and do business efficiently with their customers across the E procurement landscape. So we're excited to dive in and talk more about that. In our short time today.

Unknown Speaker : 2:30

Again,

Unknown Speaker : 2:31

real quick, how long have you been doing this for I have a feeling it's been a while a long time.

Unknown Speaker : 2:35

Yeah, even though I look like I'm 12 now. So officially, a bunch of the NGO has been in existence for about 10 years. Going back about 20 years ago, I started a web development marketing company. We did a lot of really commerce, build outs and so forth back then. So I have this wide array of a background that stems not only from commerce rollouts, everything that's involved there obviously, as well as obviously this gap that puzzle the ghost solves around seamlessly building out scalable solutions that integrate in a I pathway right through procurement technologies. So we have our foot our hand on the pulse on everything commerce, especially obviously b2b as well as everything procurement, which is what all these organizations around the world are using to manage their spend.

Unknown Speaker : 3:28

Awesome.

Unknown Speaker : 3:30

Yeah, no, that's, that's that's exactly what we want to get into. So, um, yeah, let's let's get into it. As you know, this is only the second episode, we just decided on the fly that you're going to be the official sponsor. So we'll work on data, that intro make that better over time. But yeah, I mean, the first thing that I want to talk about is just the base infrastructure, right? Like you're getting into b2b e commerce. Most companies just don't know what to do. That's what refining is there just there. It's not like retail. And the reason we're doing this is because retails got the playbook in my opinion. It's obvious with b2b e commerce, I think there's a lot of options for platforms. You know, you have your big guys like Magento hybris. Even now Salesforce commerce cloud, I would consider them in the mix because it's Salesforce. They're kind of all everything because in Salesforce, and then you have all these like little smaller players, you lost a little bit a smaller player, but they're getting bigger. Insight is kind of that mid size player. And then you have a big con. I mean, there's just obviously there's so many options. So yeah, great, where you're kind of behind the scenes, you know, Charles has their biases, because we only work on certain platforms. What are you kind of seeing success with what are your customers seeing success with and what are you seeing not success?

Unknown Speaker : 4:49

So that way we'll commerce is not one size fits all. As we all know, we work with 40 or 50 other ecommerce providers as well as the ones that you just mentioned. And In our customers use, you know, all those various commerce technologies. You know, obviously, I think you know that the first and foremost thing is really trying to find a trusted expert that can help guide a company in the right direction. You know, really in guiding, you know, in the right direction, there's a lot of factors. There's your P factors in terms of what's powering the product, there's content factors, marketing factors, and obviously there's budget factors right, but really kind of identifying and you know, figure out who those kind of subject matter experts that you can bring in to kind of help shape your b2b you know, drive and identifying you know, the right size to work with. You know, it's not something you know, I don't think that any company wants to just hire a person for to go out there and spin off a store and call it their very commerce world. I think that you know, it look when you look at bill vers buy kind of thinking about, you know, should you outsource? Or maybe should you not? Think about this? We are all in the business of doing business right? Probably I'm sure everybody on this on this podcast and such is in the business of doing business right? I could go out and sell plumbing and electrical components. Sure. I can be good at it probably not. I can go out and build ecommerce stores like I did 20 years ago, but am I going to be as good as trellis? Absolutely not what I am good at and what my team is good at is doing these types of integrations. Right. So it really is important to to identify identify the right partners that will help guide you to the, to the right technologies and platforms that you should be looking at. Right.

Unknown Speaker : 6:46

So yeah, so Brady, when we may get into this a little further into the episode but you you're getting the right partners obviously is a critical critical piece of this, but you probably have gone through partners as well, to you know, get things done. So maybe we could talk about a few of those as we get further along as well.

Unknown Speaker : 7:07

Absolutely.

Unknown Speaker : 7:09

Cool. Well, um, I want to dig in a little bit more, I'm just curious, like out of your, your mix of customers, where do you see people doing the most volume? Like, let's look at maybe a more black and white metric? Like what are the platforms that you think are powering more sales and more kind of

Unknown Speaker : 7:27

grow? I

Unknown Speaker : 7:28

think it's really around verticals, right. And so I mean, obviously we see a ton with Magento See, great amount with you know, like the sales forces of the world because they're generally when you're larger companies. Inside you're actually very powerful on a customer you know, from our customers perspective, but we really do see a mixed bag of, of different types of scenarios and a lot of it is vertically aligned. Like if you are a buyer research company, then you're going to be wanting to sell into every university out there that's doing lab work and research work, which you know, today is obviously very sticky with everybody trying to, you know, find the new way of life and deal with the viruses, virus that's out there, as well as healthcare, right. So kind of, you know, a lot of life going on there, but we didn't see a significant drop off and transactions across our entire ecosystem, we saw maybe a different way that people might be purchasing, whether with larger purchases less, you know, less transactions, but larger transactions. So there's, I think there's a lot of factors there. And, you know, I think that, you know, any one industry is, you know, doing it all, but they're all very sticky in different ways.

Unknown Speaker : 8:39

Yeah. So it's very, it's very fragmented, where, you know, that's why I think it's so difficult for companies to choose a platform like it like I said, as it's not, it's not like retail, where I think you got your kind of obvious Shopify, maybe Magento, and a couple other choices they probably gonna make. There's a lot of choices out there, but sounds like you're seeing a lot of momentum for Magento insight and Salesforce. So the three that you see kind of how

Unknown Speaker : 9:04

we see it everywhere, but I mean hybrids and, you know, all over the place. And you know, but I think that, you know, again, it comes down to kind of the type of company. It is it is a company that has been kind of direct to consumer business to consumer that that now is trying to get into the b2b world. Do they understand the landscape, right? And I think all those factors are important, right? So you have multiple channels that obviously a company that maybe b2b today that maybe traditionally was a b2c focus that's getting in that they're getting into, they have this kind of b2b, organic, where companies today are trying to find hand sanitizers and they're trying to find it from whoever they can find. And they stumbled across this consumer oriented company, that now all of a sudden has an influx of b2b business because of that, right? So now they start looking at that b2b business and now let's Be the organic business. Now they've sold you know, punch out the ghost For instance, a small company that that buys hand sanitizers for all of our team, maybe now they want to form a relationship with punch out to go. So now their e commerce platform may need to have approvals and so forth, maybe, you know, as punch on the go as the customer for this particular hand sanitizer company, maybe we require that maybe we want to set thresholds for individual users. So now Commerce has to have that ability. So now really, maybe Shopify is out of the picture. Now, maybe big commerce is out of the picture. Maybe there's plugins? I don't know.

Unknown Speaker : 10:30

Right. So yeah, that's a really good point. And I, and I've been thinking a lot about that is, you know, I think that some of these retail companies are actually VC companies are actually really well positioned for b2b to transition into it because they already have the e commerce down to some degree and they just kind of layer on this b2b and they might be able to transition to it. So you're right. There's there's this huge spectrum of things that could be working, it could be someone kind of expanding on on the Shopify or big commerce or growing into something else. Yeah. Oh, yeah. A lot

Unknown Speaker : 11:02

about the consumerization of b2b right so, I am very firm believer that the b2c companies that have tackled b2b and done it well are so much further ahead and b2b companies that are just trying to do it well right so for instance like like a Lowe's right you know, you're in a store, you know the brand very well, right. And look at their it's been all over the news. They've been doing so much and b2b. And they and they're really hitting on all cylinders, all cylinders right now, from b2c and b2b and every type of, you know, outfit, if you will, right. So, I think it's a very right time for b2c oriented companies to start looking at b2b. And maybe these b2c oriented companies may have started to trickle into b2b, organically and now they can go and foster those relationships, right.

Unknown Speaker : 11:51

The other two scenarios that I'm familiar with it really fit into exactly what you're saying. One is a an LED lighting company. I'm familiar with that had b2b and b2c components. And the b2c was the first to launch, e commerce and b2b. They were a little reluctant, but then when they did when they finally learned from the b2c side, things have been going beautifully for that they've been doing just great, great work. And then you know, on the other side in another company, a fashion business that was exclusively B to be realized that because they owned a factory to make their particular type of net where they could really have a major b2b, you know, commerce business, you know, they slowly listen to the advice of a lot of people and learn how to do that well and it's been remarkable for them so two very different successes but successes number one is really right

Unknown Speaker : 12:54

now and then there's their ability to pivot is even huger. Right so like, like money. As a customer of ours, they pivoted probably saw the news. They were setting up a manufacturer plays for PB E and so forth. And then another customer like GE Healthcare. Another one that's been working right now with Ford. You know, they these companies have been able to pivot very well. They have the infrastructure to do so. So there's all types of pivots going on, whether it's b2c moving into b2b or b2b pivoting into kind of different areas to deal with things.

Unknown Speaker : 13:26

Yeah, I agree. This is a great time to pivot right now in the current climate of business. So you you mentioned that you think actually, a lot of b2c companies are better positioned to kind of almost expand into b2b online, which I agree with for a lot of reasons that we could spend a lot of time talking about. But I think one of the barriers for b2b companies getting into e commerce is integrations right like they have this legacy RP system or you know they have all their clients, a customer customers, e procurement systems that you Guys help with them. So they have all these systems that they need to integrate. So, to me, that's one of the big barriers to entry for a lot of these b2b companies, because whatever systems they have aren't designed for e commerce. And now they got to integrate that in.

Unknown Speaker : 14:14

So I mean, over and beyond, obviously, identifying the platforms, it's looking at, again, gathered the channels as verticals of b2b segments, right? So, you know, those b2b, organic customers they recently acquired, there's b2b relationships where you need to be able to do more things on the commerce technology, many of your big b2b, right, so the big b2b, there's companies that are leveraging e procurement systems such as a rebound Koopa, and Jagger, yo St. Many others there's hundreds of them globally, to manage their spend, right. And there's more and more coming to the market all the time. I think we've connected to upwards of 200 different e procurement systems today, around the world and you know, each of these kind of procurement systems create incredible opportunities because these are now beginning To be relationships, you are looking at integrating with these particular organizations, whether they're universities or whatever. So if you if you look at the journey of a b2b customer, it may have been b2b organic, that turned into some b2b relationship, right? And now there's maybe a Korean b2b relationship in the works. Now, a now that b2b organic, which is one user moved into 10 or 20 years now could become thousands of users within an organization once you're connected into their ear p or their e procurement system to business with right. So, integration is key because these buying organizations are leveraging e procurement systems 50% of larger organizations out there are leveraging e procurement systems of some sort. And 33% plan to implement and these are these are stats from from middle of last year. Now we look at it and it's going on the hundred percent, right and you got to do more with less and Unless means, you know, a lot of companies like, you know, casinos and hotels that had to furlough, right? They still need to purchase, right? But they have to do more with less, which is going to require, you know, integration, right, they're not going to be able to do business with vendors that aren't integrated. Like they need to know that when they submit an order, it's getting into an IR p, it's hitting workflow. The products are being fulfilled, right, they're able to collect You know, they're able to invoice electronically. Nobody wants to manually key in invoices, and that happens a lot.

Unknown Speaker : 16:33

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker : 16:35

It's crazy. How much of that can be automated. So let me paint a picture. I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on this. I think if you're a company, let's say you have an E RP, popular ones like Microsoft Dynamics, right? They don't have, they don't have their own e commerce platform. So that means you need to integrate it with a Magento or Shopify or whatever. I think what we're seeing is that there's a lot of value in using some sort of iPad. Or like kind of off the shelf connector to kind of start the process get connected to let's, let's use Magento as an example. And then another, you know, bought, like, you know, buy versus build. I think building these integrations on your own can get really expensive and I think if you can buy some of that technology in tandem can buy your technology, you kind of build this ecosystem of integrations without building it all yourself. Do you see where I'm getting that?

Unknown Speaker : 17:26

Yeah, and it's, you know, just I guess be clear so again, you know, pleasure to go is in between procurement and commerce. Right. So when you're talking about it is I think also quite involved on the Canada commerce selection and understanding what your internal kind of MRP is your order manager. Yeah, that needs to connect right. You have to have that connectivity for for pricing for availability for automation of those orders, right. So you can have a website and and sell products, but if your people are getting emails to go and manually key that into QuickBooks or or dynamics or NetSuite, or whatever the case may be there's there's ways to automate that right? So yeah, so if you're like on Magento, and you have NetSuite, there might be like Sligo or, or some player out there that Exactly,

Unknown Speaker : 18:14

yeah. Right. My point is, I don't think it makes sense to, you know, build a Sligo or build an end channel, or not anymore. All these guys that have some pretty sophisticated I pass stuff out there, whatever you want to call it, you know, maybe you have to customize a little bit or work with them to kind of tweak it and make it work for you. But it seems like that's getting more mature and there's enough good and off the shelf stuff on that side. And then on your guy side that you could buy a lot of this stuff and kind of work together to kind of get it put it all together in a way that that works. Right.

Unknown Speaker : 18:48

I think it adds across like everything from reviews to your products to you know, syndication efforts, like you know, there's there's no there's I remember, going back a decade ago, there's a company called go data feed that would help you syndicate all your products, right? They had pre built connectors for Magento and big commerce and Shopify, and still work.

Unknown Speaker : 19:07

They're still there. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker : 19:10

I love them. This is great. And then you had like the shopping cart migration people that could help, you know, format products from one platform to another. And you've probably looked at those people as well, like there's, there's purpose built technology out there that absolutely should be leveraged, and generally speaking, has already built in some flexibility in that to tailor to meet your needs, right? Because generally speaking, no European tour, Europeans are the same. Not nor is kind of two commerce systems where they connect might be very much similar, but the data that goes back and forth, many finesse and finesse, again, there's flexibility built into these IPS technologies already.

Unknown Speaker : 19:47

So

Unknown Speaker : 19:48

the one of the things that, you know, I've talked to clients about is that, you know, if you're building things from scratch today, you really have to question why and that really is becoming A huge thing. And if five years ago, 10 years ago, there was much more that you needed to build today, not not so much. I mean, if you're building something from scratch, it better be for a really good reason. So the cost and the time involved and otherwise, look for those partners look for what's off the shelf. Look what you can tweak, you know, as I was saying, yeah. And to that point, the only thing that means that the ecosystem I mean, I think why the reason we've selected certain platforms to focus on is because we're very bullish on the ecosystem. Do you think that the ecosystem is now almost one of the most important factors in these things? Like if you know, the companies that have the best ecosystem seem to kind of Yeah, well,

Unknown Speaker : 20:40

yeah, you want to put all your eggs into an e commerce platform that's powered by for people.

Unknown Speaker : 20:47

And I was like,

Unknown Speaker : 20:52

that was like, Gone are the days of building homegrown commerce technologies. Gone are the days of building homegrown earpiece Oh, God. The days of building homegrown procurement systems just like the time to market and just the amount of technology that's out there, it really gets down to just finding the right technology, the right ecosystem, right? Are you going to get more support from a Magento? base, you know, world or a new e commerce player that just came to market three months ago, right? It's like, but like, the time is always now, right? The time has always been now in terms of kind of building on Commerce, technology and so forth. But you have to, again, kind of align with the right partners that understand the ecosystem, which is huge to your point. Like it's a massive area, right? Because it's like, you know, God forbid if if you say you say you choose Magento and say you do choose, you know, si company number one, and you get tired of working with si company number one, well guess what, there's an SI company number two that understands Magento 20 mile radius of you that can come in and Right. So I think that's, that's really massively important.

Unknown Speaker : 22:03

I agree. I agree, that's one of the things that we always pride ourselves is like, we're building something for our customer that, you know, they could take it and run it in house and hire some people or find some experts or whatever, whatever it may be. Um, so so with that being said, um, you know, you guys saw some of that puzzle piece of integrations we talked about Don't, don't really build versus buy, because there's so many things you can buy out there that's always needs. And I think integrations are becoming more and more available through people like you. So can you talk a little bit about what you guys are solving and hire solving and just kind of get into that a little bit more? Yeah. So let me

Unknown Speaker : 22:43

punch out to go solving the various requirements that are that are required by not only procurement systems, but by these large b2b buying organizations that need to purchase from vendors, right. So we're enabling the ability for distributors or manufacturers to leverage their chosen e commerce application, whatever that may be, through all that due diligence, but leverage that to do business with their customers on E procurement networks, right. So one of the, you know, probably one of the biggest things that we solve for is dealing with the actual unique requirements that a b2b buying organization will have on a set procurement system. For instance. Koopa is the fastest growing e procurement systems out there they have about thousand procure to pay customers. We already integrate with probably half of those Cuba customers through the 10s of thousands of integrations that we have, right. So we understand that not only how to connect into a koopa, but more importantly, the unique requirements that the organizations on Koopa will need to have. Getting back to that point of being able to find patterns. You know, I've had technology that's flexible, like Everything's really purpose built. So we're mitigating the gaps between procurement and commerce, enabling the transactions, creating a no friction way of integrating right to, to eliminate any barriers of entry. These integrations are generally vital to a distributor manufacturers life as they know it, because these are generally going to be some of our largest customers. And once these organizations these trip distributors and manufacturers are connected to the customers on these repairs and koopas of the world out there, they're going to find they're in a really right position. But it's not like a you build it and they will come now here comes in kind of that consumer mentality of being marketed to or understanding the various ways that you can market to your customers, right. So, I think, you know, aligning the right technologies, you know, is what we do in terms of connecting the dots between procurement and commerce, but you're really facilitating that entire purchasing process between two at a large scale. Right? Yeah. So

Unknown Speaker : 25:04

let's walk through that just real quick to continue on this. And then I want to get to one more thing about why sites fail. But so you know, I'm a, you know, working for some organization that has Koopa. And, you know, company distributor X has their e commerce site. And now your guys solution basically, I can go onto the e commerce site and make sure that it's all kind of sinking with Koopa. And I'm not kind of extending myself and buying more than what the company is allowed me to manage through Koopa. Is that kind of like a I'm trying to think of the simplest like, not, you know, basic terms that

Unknown Speaker : 25:42

I wish there was a simple way we could come up with an elevator speech after this podcast. Because it is a struggle we've had for 10 years and if it was easy, there'd be more punch out that goes up in or it's not so yeah, well, let's

Unknown Speaker : 25:56

say so I'm a, you know, guy that works through Yeah, works for, you know, some some company that uses coupon. I can go on this distributor site now right and I can buy with my

Unknown Speaker : 26:08

Yeah, yeah. So

Unknown Speaker : 26:11

yeah, I'm sorry, the threshold and everything actually live in Kupo, which is kind of Yes. Right. So what happens is the distributor manufacturer, and sells to a company that runs Koopa, for instance, now as a piece of real estate, they might be one of 10 or 12 preferred vendors across various types of commodities. So on click, the actual end user gets authenticated from within Koopa through punch out to go into the ecommerce application. authentication, the actual store is going to reflect the way it needs to, you may sell the distributor manufacturer 10,000 products. But this company and Kupo has already agreed to purchase 200 of these products. And you guys have negotiated pricing so your store needs to be able to reflect the offering and the pricing accurately so that the end user can shop or maybe the picking up a quote because it's not always commodities might be services? Well, yeah, we're just kind of predefined quotes. But the biggest difference in his workflow is that the end user does not check out on the website, they're actually going to transfer that card back into their procurement system. At that point, it actually looks like an abandoned cart. Right, but ultimately, it's going through approval on kupa. Once it gets approved, that's when a purchase order gets sent. We may receive the purchase order via like C XML CDI Doc, whatever the case may be, but then we're going to drive that back through commerce right. So once it hits commerce, now it uses your normal workflow the order goes back in your order management system, you fulfill it right you're going to have a pizza party, you're excited about this big deal you just got and you invoice back out to the customer, you can do all this between commerce and procurement which used to be really nice it it functions. So e procurement is this modular component that sits on a buying organization CRP, just as Magento is a modular components sits on a distributor and manufacturers B or P right. These modular components may it very easy for both sellers to sell their products and for buyers to buy their products. Does that make sense?

Unknown Speaker : 28:06

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly like the builder and let's get into why companies fail the BBB e commerce. I mean, we see I mean, I literally just talked to a company yesterday they have they have a million skews million skews a lot of skews, right. And I think he said they only did like 100,000 on their website. Which is funny because we have a company that has three products and those 50 million on their website. Yes, though. You can see all that. Like, to me that's like a total failure, right? Like, how are they not selling more of their millions of views on this website. And I think it kind of comes down to the b2b buying process isn't as simple as Add To Cart buy like it's not three product company is a you don't want to get into too much because I don't want something that doesn't want us to talk a lot about because they're so successful. But you know, they're obviously a simple buying process that anyone can just buy on. BP doesn't work that way. So you kind of talked about how like build it and they will come doesn't work. And I think that's one of the reasons I want to do this podcast is I feel very strongly about that. It's like we can, you know, great, we can get you up on Magento with your functionality, but I don't think that's enough. I think you have to have like a cultural strategy. Yes. But to get people to use this and kind of like, basically build your company around this more automated strategy.

Unknown Speaker : 29:26

Yeah. I think that probably tilts right into kind of how our resources are used. Right. We I think we've, we've all heard in the past kind of Death of a Salesman. And I don't think that's the case. I think it's kind of the repurpose of, of sales people to repurpose of how you might market when you do have these ecommerce applications, because the I think there's a change in behavior, right. So, you know, you talk about a company that has really good focus on three products and you talk about another company that has a million products that may not quite happen. Focus. What happens when you get a million in one product? How do they do they even know? Like across? I can even go have a conversation. But your three product company when they add a product, it's meaningful, right? They can go Yeah.

Unknown Speaker : 30:15

Yeah, absolutely.

Unknown Speaker : 30:17

So, yeah, let me interject just for a second. I mean, so the million skew example, I think, is a great example of, you know, b2b and the challenges that are there. So, so really, there's so many questions here, and I don't really want to reveal who this one particular company is, but, but think about, you know, from the salesperson perspective, all those million skews are sold in what groupings you know, and for what purposes, right so it's always those kinds of questions that you do have to ask in b2c and people are trained for that. Like if you're an apparel merchant, you know, it is men's apparel, and then it's tops or bottoms or outfits Putting together or whatever, right, or seasonality, or you're searching or filtering by colors and sizes, and all this. So really be the beat didn't do that in the same way across the board. And so I think when you have a million skews that are there, it's like, well, how is this being filtered? Like, you know, are their packages of 10,000 and 10,010 thousand skews, for example, that are the most popular, you know, groupings, you know, filtering that have to go out there to, you know, their consumers. And that's, that's a tough question. It's tough, really, for what you know, we're all talking about here.

Unknown Speaker : 31:36

Yeah, absolutely. So we have we have a customer company called a masumi is 66 trillion products. I think it's like 60 zeros. It's crazy. I think their website does a really amazing job with facilitating and it's all kind of engineers that are shopping. And all these configurations are obviously like I can buy this bolt for something. My hands In a multitude of ways, and all types of stuff, and those are all the configurations, every little configuration and other skill. So, I mean, so there's, you know, there's a company that says, let's just put all the main products up there and, you know, humbling themselves, then there's the companies like assuming, who is very focused on the type of product and knows how they serve their customers, and and does a great job at communicating, you know, through their efforts on new things, new, new technologies, they have to fabricate products and do different things. And then, you know, back to the three product company, right. And I think that, you know, obviously the focus is important. I think that how how companies, you know, present themselves and utilize their resources is a change when they start adopting more commerce, right. They start really trying to understand the various channels right, and how the most effective ways to communicate within those channels. Right. And you guys, both have been on the b2c and b2b side of things and, and there's great overlap there on how communications happen, but there's also great I think differences right. So, you know, in terms of kind of channels strategies and so forth that companies have, you know, we look at the averages across ecommerce and b2b distributor manufacturers business they say that 12 to 15% comes to their website, right 20 25% 3% 30 35% through fan these big, you know, old school networks, then you got phone, fax, email, carrier pigeon, smoke signals, all these all these different manual ways, right, but how, how each one of these segments facilitates, is I think, a different way of communicating. So when you have on www, you have the users engaged, you can drive the users directly to your website, right when you look at now, e procurement, you can keep them engaged, but you can't drive them directly to your website, you have to drive them through their procurement system into your website. And then when you look at like old school ways like the van and all that stuff, you can't really engage your users unless it really is that kind of sales approach. Right? So a lot of our customers have gone, you know, as to the kind of ban and E procurement customers that have this ability to do this punch out, you know, e procurement integrations to try to drive more and do more through commerce to engage the users, right? So now what happens is that 12 to 15% average that's out there across a massive group of b2b organizations now can quickly you know, get to 50% plus of their business through commerce and engage the users along the way. So the traditional way that companies may have sold may have been through a sales rep that knows is this company buys this particular bolt, you know, once a month. Or every week or whatever the case may be. But now through a digital experience in commerce, they can not only present this particular bolt particular product, but they can show them all the other great things that are potentially, you know, opportunities for an organization to purchase. Right? So,

Unknown Speaker : 35:18

yeah, hopefully that answer. Yeah, exactly. You know, no one can do that. Like, you know, if you have a million skews or even 100,000 skews, there's no way you can know all that as a salesperson and know all the details about all of them. You need a website to kind of facilitate that. So I like the number that you brought up about 50% through e commerce. I mean, what do you think? I think that, that I think it's important to have this like target that you're trying to achieve. And I think 50% makes sense on the e commerce and then probably a big chunk on the E procurement. do you envision that like in the future, let's just say if you were running it, let's say me and you were running the organization, and we we wanted to build it the way that we think it should be run in the future? Would you envision about 50% ecommerce and then maybe 50 percent, or 10 or 40% of your pyramid and like a little bit of UBI for some large men, how do you how do you see that point? I'm looking to

Unknown Speaker : 36:08

turn all the the procurement into commerce, right? I want 95% of my business coming through commerce, right. So the way that we do that is even it's so it may be stepping stone. So maybe you you really just get orders from a company, this happens all the time. They hold kind of a Masters set of data of, of distributor manufacturer data, and their internal earpiece system. They're sending POS sending orders, but pushing those back through commerce becomes a commerce activity. But it also becomes a segue to maybe start being able to get into kind of E procurement punch out integrations, right so like the E procurement transactions are our punch out, which is really just building a requisition. Right. It's it's using the commerce experience, the purchase orders, obviously the order, right, we're looking to drive that order back through commerce, right. We don't want to drive it into it. RP are evolved IT teams to take six months, nine months a year to integrate with. And the same thing holds true with the kind of the band members who want to take EDI transactions and we want to drive them back to commerce. They all become commerce activities and commerce becomes this hub. Right commerce now has way more budget, and rightfully so it should eliminates kind of this friction of it, it conversations become very easy to onboard customers. But you can do more with with commerce, right and, and at 12 to 15% of an average. If it's my company, again, it's 95%. I'm gonna drive all that through commerce because I can leverage commerce, the workflow that exists in commerce to do the things it needs to do to communicate with customers to dispatch orders downstream into their ear p to, you know, notify shipping stuff, like all that stuff is already happening through commerce. All those communications already exist, leverage them, right and that's the whole idea, I think.

Unknown Speaker : 37:55

So real quick, that 12 what do you think stopping that from the Done from the commerce side, do you think it's because like, you mentioned how I'm Cooper, they have like, only 200 products are allocated or whatever. Is it because they're not getting that personalized on site experience where they can only shop what they're allowed shop or what do you think stopping that percentage?

Unknown Speaker : 38:17

Yeah, it's just a thing. It's

Unknown Speaker : 38:19

a mixed bag.

Unknown Speaker : 38:20

And I think that it's it. I think some of that may be because the distributors, manufacturers, manufacturers do not have an e commerce infrastructure that can support the various requirements that our customers may have. Whether the b2c or b2b or b2c, or whatever the case may be, that inhibits their ability to go sell into these organizations.

Unknown Speaker : 38:41

Yeah, none of that makes sense. And that kind of brings up the last question. So let's make sure you know, I think we need like 10 podcasts for this right? with you on this Brady. But, uh, what do b2b companies need to do to shift culturally it's like, I think it's also very much a cultural shift and we see companies That are more engaged in that cultural shift. And they're like, Hey, you want to get this fall through? You know, eecom integrated? What's more fun? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker : 39:10

I think there's, I got a ton of examples. So one example is a great, great customer of ours can be called Eastern first. They have 20 I think locations in North America, they have trained one person in each in each location to be the ecommerce expert. Right and a lot of companies are doing this, right. So again, that treated that person may have been kind of customer service or sales, but they have put a subject matter expert at every location for commerce, and understands the various ways that they used to first as a company can transact with their customers, right. So now they have people on the ground speaking the same language. Now they've 20 locations. Now let's talk about like, maybe one of our newer customers coming up batteries, plus Right, I think 675 franchise locations or something like that, that number, excuse me now doing that same thing, but on a different mindset to make sure that they can engage and Bill Foster, you know, stronger kind of commerce practices as a company. So, when we talk about repurposing of sales, it's not just sales, its marketing, its customer service, wherever the case may be. But it's educating, you know, your internal team to create this kind of cross functional team, all speaking the same language, and speaking the same language to learn to embrace and enhance commerce, versus the traditional ways of just selling a product. Does that answer your question?