Episode 76: Unilog – A Distribution First B2B eCommerce Platform

The Hard Truth About B2B eCommerce podcast treads onward this week with an in-house episode welcoming our new guest Brian Lombardo, SVP Channels and Partners at Unilog, to discuss how distributors can innovate in B2B eCommerce.

Brian Lombardo, SVP Channels and Partners at Unilog, has been in B2B distribution for nearly three decades now. First at a major distributor, then at Infor, a leading distribution ERP, and now at Unilog, a B2B eCommerce platform.  We talk about the challenges of getting distribution onto eCommerce and how to overcome them with product data, erp integrations, and unifying culture with salespeople. Brian and Unilog have worked with both small and larger distributors and continue to innovate in B2B eCommerce with their platform Unilog which can provide product data, PIM, and eCommerce.

Episode 76: Unilog – A Distribution First B2B eCommerce Platform

In this episode, co-hosts Isaiah Bollinger, CEO of Trellis, and Timothy Peterson, President & COO of Speir Digital, Inc, are welcoming Brian Lombardo, SVP Channels and Partners at Unilog, to discuss:

• Unilog, a suite of connected product content and commerce solutions for B2B businesses
• How Unilog meets the needs of the distribution in B2B space
• Content enrichment
• What you need to make information web ready and web friendly
• Why the quality of data in ERP is limited to serving just one transactional purpose 
• Logical flow to navigate catalog structure on the website
• How to enrich a catalog with descriptions, attributes and beyond
• Differences between taxonomies and how they affect the structure
• Why you need Product Information Management Tools (PIM)
• Content management system (CMS) tools to create and manage your sites
• How to align a feature set with a B2B vertical 
• ERP integrations to create a single point of maintenance for all the data
• Customer based pricing vs tier model
• How to retrieve the data from ERP on a real time or on a real time basis 
• How to overcome challenges with multi warehouse ordering
• What data is needed from ERP to power website functionality
• Simplifying the process of pricing requests
• Punchout and round trip to allow electronic communication between a company’s internal procurement systems and its suppliers
• How to make your website pages SEO friendly
• Power of mobile in B2B eCommerce
• The importance of cybersecurity and privacy in B2B
• Empowering your sales team with eCommerce functionality

This podcast’s origin story

Podcasts are still a relatively new medium for content, but just because they are new doesn’t mean they lack power. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Podcasts have a unique ability to reach people on their time, whenever it is convenient for them – a way that previously did not majorly exist. Podcast listeners can take the information wherever they go and absorb it as they see fit. And that’s exactly what we are looking to do here. We want to reach a new audience of B2B eCommerce enthusiasts.

This podcast is all about B2B eCommerce. B2B is a different breed of eCommerce and it needs a different breed of Podcast. We get into the nitty-gritty of integrations, adoption, platforms, data and so much more regarding what makes B2B difficult to make successful for eCommerce!

We noticed that a few B2C podcasts exist on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, but nothing designed for the B2B eCommerce community. B2B and B2C eCommerce have a lot of overlap, but even more differences. Each has a different set of requirements and customer demands that impact project scope. Let’s call a spade a spade. B2B is harder, more complicated, and harder to market. But it is also a bigger piece of the pie. The eCommerce B2B roadmap to success is not as cut and dry as B2C and that’s why we have started this podcast.

B2C platforms like Magento and Shopify have large communities that support and have done the entre-level work of most projects. The same community does not exist for B2B, but we are starting to build it. The ecosystem may not be as mature, but as experts in the space, we hope this podcast will help some people wake up and reevaluate their online sales strategy.

The first podcast examines major trends around B2B eCommerce as well as answering all of the above questions.  Take a listen for yourself and let us know what you think!

We will be posting new episodes with special guests weekly. You can listen on our dedicated podcast website and download the podcast on all major channels: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Overcast, Pocket Cast, Castro, Castbox, Podchaser, Podcast Addict, Deezer, Listen Notes, and RSS Feed.