New Mobile App Promises Full B2B E-Commerce Experience

Insite Software on Tuesday released the InsiteCommerce Mobile App, describing it as the first fully configurable white label mobile app built for leading manufacturers and distributors.

The app supports everyone involved in the B2B e-commerce experience, Insite said — from customers to channel partners, to field sales and support teams.

Companies purchasing the app can tailor its functions to specific roles and responsibilities by delivering customer-specific product catalog and data, pricing and product recommendations, and order and reorder capabilities.

“There’s a combination of customizations and configurations driven by a single instance of the InsiteCommerce Admin Console across Web and mobile apps,” said Karie Daudt, VP of marketing and customer experience at Insite.

“We customize the color scheme, icons and certain images in each build of a private labeled application to suit the branding standards of each customer,” she told CRM Buyer.

Private labeling of each application is done internally, and “doesn’t require any code customization or additional implementation effort for our customers,” Daudt said.

The app includes a biometric login capability, customizable alerts, bar code scanning, GPS capabilities, speech-to-text and enhanced security.

Among the app’s prebuilt features are product catalog search, order status check, and the ability to add items to a cart and check out.

The app is available for iOS and Android.

Integration, Integration, Integration

The InsiteCommerce Mobile App works with Insite Software’s e-commerce platform, which integrates with leading enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and Web content management systems.

It automatically builds experience based on a business’ existing InsiteCommerce instance.

“Any new customer can extend their reach with a native mobile solution when they roll out an InsiteCommerce system,” Daudt remarked.

Companies with a mobile-first implementation strategy can “focus on implementing a light version of the branded mobile application first, then execute a more complete integration of e-commerce, including integration with their ERP and other core business functions,” she said.

Insite partners with each client to manage and deploy its apps to the iOS and Google Play app stores, Daudt noted.

“This lets our customers maintain their branding standards and achieve app store presence while still complying with Apple’s rigorous approval standards.”

Use Cases

Manufacturers or distributors who want to improve their customer experience and better enable their direct and channel teams to serve the customer would benefit from the InsiteCommerce Mobile App, Daudt said.

“For B2B companies, much of their customer and team experience is in the field, out at a job site, or traveling through a sales territory,” she noted. “They need key data available to them and easy to use in their moment of relevance, across any mobile device.”

Among the possible use cases for the Insite Mobile App, according to Daudt, are the following:

• Direct sales reps in the field needing to look up end-customer order or delivery details or other information, or place an order on a customer’s behalf;
• Direct service technicians in the field needing to look up a detailed product tech spec or order a replacement part; and
• Direct shipping clerks or delivery drivers taking a picture of a shipment at the outbound dock or upon delivery to the customer, and attaching it to the order as proof of delivery.

The InsiteCommerce Mobile App “may be attractive for existing Insite customers,” said Rebecca Wettemann, VP of research at Nucleus Research.

However, “I don’t see a broader reach than that,” she told CRM Buyer. “Unless I’m a frequent purchaser from a vendor, I’m unlikely to download their app.”