INTERVIEW 178 Business with a consumer mindset Our experiences with consumer commerce inevitably impact what we expect from business platforms. “The Amazon effect sent shockwaves through the economy, resetting expectations for product availability, delivery time, personalisation, payments and more,” says Matt Abbott, chief strategy officer at Cavallo. This seismic shift has redefined what people expect from business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce providers. “The bar is constantly rising,” says Abbott. “More and more, we’re seeing consumer-grade experiences with B2B interactions and transactions. B2B ordering can feel like online shopping.” But working out how to meet the demands of that constantly rising bar can be an enormous headache for B2B e-commerce providers. Cavallo’s goal is to remove that pain. “Our end-to-end order visibility and workflow provides a range of benefits to the brands and B2B companies seeking to exceed customer expectations,” says Abbott. “A robust workflow engine manages orders coming from any and every channel. It controls order flow, automates manual steps, eliminates wasted time and ensures every order is shipped as fast as possible. These dramatic improvements to order visibility can help users provide much better customer service.” Abbott says the Cavallo solution can help companies increase their customer base, expand their business and grow revenue. "Our users can provide a better customer experience with faster, automation-enabled order processing complemented by customer support armed with real-time order status information. Cavallo helps businesses win by offering a number of enterprise-class capabilities out-of-the box.” A relevant example in today's environment is how Cavallo allows users to maximise order volume in the midst of unpredictable supply chains. "Our workflow engine is always watching,” says Abbott. “Our automations allocate inventory to waiting orders as soon as it is available." Another example can be seen in the seamless support of different business rules across channels and customer classes. "Take a company that sells backpacks, as an example. They need to treat the large order from a big box retailer such as Target much differently than an end consumer's order for a single backpack. With Cavallo, it's easy." Users can solve other complex challenges too, such as legacy and paper-based systems and processes. “They can bog down companies as they are trying to expand,” says Abbott. “When a company’s systems aren’t flexible enough to quickly accommodate changes, workarounds pop up like whack-a-mole. Growth and apparent success can create friction, inefficiency and disappearing profits. As such, Cavallo helps businesses quickly adopt advanced automation to scale rapidly and profitably.” B2B commerce platforms can be as simple as online shopping. Cavallo’s Matt Abbott explains how great buying experiences don’t need to be solely for consumers BY ELLY YATES-ROBERTS Photo composite: Unsplash/Surface and Cavallo
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzQ1NTk=