White Paper

Bridging the B2B Buying Experience with a Self-service Portal

Delivering Unified Experiences That Span the End-to-End AfterSales Journey
Content

Buyer’s expectations have evolved far beyond what standalone digital commerce systems can provide

As more businesses come to the conclusion that standalone self-service is failing to deliver, we’re all asking the question: How did we get here?

B2B buyer demands are on the rise as businesses face increasing economic pressures. Yet many rely on outdated and siloed sales approaches that fail to meet modern customer demands, driving dissatisfaction, lost revenue, and operational bottlenecks.

Fragmented Buyer Journeys

Standalone self-service typically operates in isolation from other sales and marketing touchpoints. This fragmentation creates silos where customers encounter roadblocks when transitioning between self-service and assisted sales.



“62% of financial leaders say improving access to siloed, distributed data will be one of their top data initiatives, with 54% of respondents citing data silos as one of their biggest barriers to innovation.”1
Missed Opportunities for Growth

Standalone systems are often static, lacking the ability to upsell, cross-sell, or respond dynamically to buyer behavior. Businesses lose out on valuable revenue streams when their platforms fail to leverage data insights effectively.



“67% of e-commerce businesses focus on driving revenue over profitability, often due to incomplete views of customer behaviors.”2
Lack of Personalization

Standalone systems treat every customer the same, offering static experiences that fail to adapt to unique buyer needs or behaviors.



“82% of global B2B marketing decision-makers agree that buyers expect an experience personalized to their needs and preferences across marketing and sales.”3

The market need for hybrid selling

B2B buyers increasingly expect the option of seamless, self-service digital experiences but still value human interactions throughout the sales journey and customer lifecycle.Yet many businesses struggle to balance both effectively, resulting in buyer regret, loyalty decline, and revenue loss.

Industry pressures

Market volatility is reshaping the way B2B businesses operate and adapt.

  • Global inflation and economic volatility are pressuring businesses to double down on efficiency to maintain profitability.

The rapid pace of innovation is pushing B2B companies to accelerate digital transformation.

  • Companies are being pushed to do more with less, increasing the need for scalable, efficient service models.

Customer expectations are rapidly evolving as they increasingly prioritize convenience, personalization, and self-service capabilities.

  • B2B buyers now expect seamless, consumer-like experiences, including self-service portals and seamless interactions across channels.

What is hybrid selling?

“Hybrid selling” in B2B refers to a sales strategy that combines both digital and in-person interactions with customers; essentially, “meeting customers where they want to be met” across various platforms.

“It utilizes a combination of channels, including remote and e-commerce, to serve customers where they prefer to buy. Because of its omnichannel nature, it enables broader and deeper real-time customer engagement.” 1

Industry data reveals

Digital B2B commerce can’t operate in isolation–buyers require human intervention, blending digital channels with collaborative seller engagement.

  • “65% of B2B buyers prefer remote human interactions or self-service for ordering and reordering.”2
  • But, “Only 14% of customer service interactions are resolved entirely in self-service.”3
  • “When buyers use both self-service and sales tools, they’re 1.8x more likely to complete a high-quality deal.”4

Hybrid selling creates new opportunities for B2B business growth and profitability.

  • “71% of consumers would increase their annual spend on aftersales if the experience improved.”5
  • Plus, “businesses experience a 31% increase in operational efficiency and revenue when embracing digital transformation.”6

1 WBR Insights 2 McKinsey & Company 3 Forrester Blogs, Seven Ways To Use GenAI For B2B Personalization; Jessie Johnson, Sep 12 2024 4 McKinsey & Company 5 McKinsey & Company 6 Gartner®, Inc. Accelerate Self-Service Success by Diagnosing Customer Needs; Eric Keller, Keith McIntosh, Olivia Foster, Kim Hedlin, Andrew Schumacher; 12 June 2024. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. 7 Gartner®, Inc. B2B Buying: How Top CSOs and CMOs Optimize the Journey, 2022. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. 8 Accenture 9 McKinsey & Company

Deliver the aftersales experiences your customers crave

Imagine a world where you deliver a seamless aftersales buying journey that effortlessly transitions between intuitive self-service tools and expert human support. Every interaction is tailored to your customers’ unique needs, from exploring replacement parts online and navigating complex purchasing decisions to submitting requests for aftersales services, creating a unified experience at every touchpoint.

In this world, sales, marketing and customer support teams work in perfect alignment, powered by integrated systems that enable personalized recommendations, proactive engagement, and smooth handoffs. Your hybrid selling and engagement model empowers your team to reduce inefficiencies, deliver value faster, and unlock new revenue streams—all while providing a customer-first experience that drives loyalty and growth.



Reimagining the End-to-End Self-Service Journey



Finding the right business model to meet your goals

There are many considerations when developing a hybrid aftersales model that will serve your business. What business objectives are you solving for? What processes need to be changed or optimized? Do we have the right technology stack? These are questions you have right now—and we’d like to help you answer them.

Identify your priority business objectives, and we’ll help you define an effective hybrid sales model.


What challenges does your business currently face?


Delayed Response Times

Customers struggle to get timely responses to inquiries, which leads to frustration and a perceived lack of priority.

Missed Cross-Selling and Upselling

Fragmented systems prevent customer-facing teams from identifying and suggesting relevant products or services.

High Cost-to-Serve

Inefficient workflows and error-prone manual tasks inflate the cost of customer service.


Inconsistent Experiences Across Channels

B2B customers often engage through multiple touchpoints and face inconsistent service, resulting in confusion and dissatisfaction.

Churn Due to Poor Service Experiences

Dissatisfied customers are more likely to switch to competitors offering seamless and responsive interactions.

Manual and Redundant Processes

Service teams spend significant time navigating siloed systems to access information or fulfill requests.


Lack of Transparency

With so many different systems and involved departments, customers struggle to find all the info they need.

Prolonged Sales Cycles

Inefficient coordination between customer service, sales, and technical support delays purchasing decisions.

Inability to Scale

Fragmented systems limit automation and self-service capabilities, making it hard to scale operations with growing demand.



Key Business Objective


Customer Experience
Revenue Growth
Cost Efficiency

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

The current state of customer experience

What got us here?
  • Siloed Systems:
    Legacy systems don’t communicate well with one another, creating data silos that hinder a unified view of the customer.
  • Rigid Workflows:
    Outdated systems often lack flexibility, making it hard to adapt processes to unique customer needs.
  • Lack of Self-Service Options:
    Many traditional solutions do not provide modern self-service capabilities, forcing customers to rely on slow, manual interactions.

Drive customer satisfaction and loyalty with a next-level customer experience

What’s possible

Give your customers autonomy by enabling 24/7 access to account information, offers, integrated chat, and support across every stage of the aftersales journey, building trust and strengthening their commitment to your business.

  • Instant Access:
    Customers access a complete list of assets, order history, interactions, audit trail, and related documents through a self-service portal, making decision-making faster and more informed.
  • Account Dashboard:
    Enable customers to develop profiles and set their communication preferences, enabling tailored experiences.
  • Asset Management:
    Import a digital version of customers’ existing assets, then tailor catalogs and service offerings to each specific asset.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, REIMAGINED

STAUFF increases customer loyalty with a digital self-service portal

Building a B2B online store with a B2C experience

STAUFF is a leading international manufacturer of hydraulic components and ready-to-install hydraulic lines. With over 50,000 products, parts, and components, they required a flexible e-commerce set-up that would simplify a complex online buying journey and enable more digital sales channels, all to serve the heightened expectations of their B2B customer base. 

To unlock customer loyalty, they built a self-service portal that smooths over the procurement and after-sales process, enabling customers to manage orders with track and trace information, documentation such as delivery notes, and real-time information on delivery dates—all in one place. By providing direct access to show data from multiple systems through Kanban Monitor, facilitate data visualization through a KPI dashboard, and support complex quoting, this portal gives their customers autonomy in the B2B buying journey—while still offering human support through Live Chat and contact forms. 

18+
countries
50,000+
products
€315M

STORYBLOK + SPRYKER ADVANTAGE

About Storyblok

Storyblok is a headless CMS for marketers and developers who want to make a bigger, faster market impact. It frees you from the pain of legacy CMS platforms and empowers your teams to ship content quickly and build with complete flexibility. Legendary brands like Adidas, T-Mobile, and Renault use Storyblok to make content management fun and collaborative. It’s Joyful Headless and it changes everything.

REVENUE GROWTH

The current state of revenue growth

What got us here?

  • Missed Data Insights:
    Companies don’t always have access to robust analytics and AI capabilities, making it difficult to identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

  • Prolonged Sales and Service Cycles:
    Legacy systems and manual processes are slow to adapt, causing delays in responding to customer needs.

  • Inefficient Lead Tracking:
    Without centralized systems, leads generated from customer service interactions aren’t captured and nurtured effectively.

Increase revenue and share of wallet

What’s possible

With a wealth of customer data all in one place, you can deliver personalized catalogs, enable service appointment bookings, and create upsell opportunities that increase revenue and drive growth.

  • Service Appointments:
    Allow customers to book aftersales service appointments directly from a self-service portal or through an Agent on their behalf.

  • Account-specific Catalogs:
    Meet the unique pricing requirements of your B2B customers while maximizing revenue and profitability.

  • Dynamic Bundling:
    Offer tailored product bundles that align with customer needs, encouraging larger purchases while optimizing inventory utilization.

REVENUE GROWTH, REIMAGINED

Sonepar Suisse enables more revenue sources with a digital self-service portal

Building a B2B online store with a B2C experience

Stauff is a market leader in manufacturing hydraulic components and performance parts used around the globe. With over 50,000 products, parts, and components, they required a flexible e-commerce set-up that would simplify a complex online buying journey and enable more digital sales channels, all to serve the heightened expectations of their B2B customer base.

To unlock customer loyalty, they built a self-service portal that smooths over the procurement and aftersales process. By providing direct access to manage orders, enable access management, and support complex quoting, this portal gives their customers autonomy in the B2B buying journey—while still offering human support where needed.

80%
of their revenue is digital commerce
250K+
products

Spryker’s Self-service Portal

Transforms fragmented B2B aftersales interactions into seamless, unified experiences, optimizing customer service, enhancing asset utilization, and driving business growth.

Drive Customer Loyalty

Build trust and strengthen engagement with 24/7 access to personalized information and documents.

A Client Dashboard gives customers 24/7 access to track orders, invoices, and account details for greater transparency.

Meet the unique pricing requirements of your B2B customers with Account-Specific Catalogs and Pricing while maximizing revenue and profitability.

Strengthen relationships and deliver the personalized experiences your customers expect with integrated Assisted Buying.

Reduce Cost to Service

Streamline the aftersales process and reduce cost to serve with a unified, user-friendly platform to coordinate activities.

Asset Management enables customers to efficiently organize, track, and access asset details, improving visibility and efficiency.

Claims Management supports the end-to-end claims creation process, enhancing customer satisfaction.

Increase Share of Wallet

Increase Share of Wallet Leverage holistic customer data to personalize catalogs and create cross-and upsell opportunities.

Allows customers to schedule, modify, and track Service Appointments effortlessly.

Increase sales by capturing cross-sell and upsell opportunities, reducing bounce rates while increasing AOV with Product Relations.

Maximize Efficiencies

Enable faster, more efficient buying and support experiences with centrally managed aftersales support.

Customers have self-service Order Management access to place orders, view order history, track, and reorder frequently purchased products.

Docs Management offers a centralized repository for secure file storage and improving collaboration.

















AWS + SPRYKER ADVANTAGE

Growing companies need a platform to grow with them

Through the synergy of AWS cloud services, serverless technology, and Spryker’s composable commerce platform, Spryker and AWS enable companies to achieve maximum flexibility and scalability and capture more profitable growth. Leveraging the breadth of AWS services and Spryker’s commitment to growth, together, we can deploy anywhere in the world, helping our customers transform their businesses and shape the future of automotive innovation.

COST EFFICIENCY

The current state of cost efficiency

What got us here?
  • Manual Data Entry:
    Teams rely heavily on spreadsheets, emails, or disconnected software, leading to human error and inefficiencies.
  • Lack of Automation:
    Status quo digital commerce platforms often lack automation, requiring human intervention for repetitive tasks.
  • Inadequate Scalability:
    Legacy systems cannot handle growing data loads or customer demands, leading to bottlenecks.

Boost cost efficiency and profitability

What’s possible

Empower your customer support and sales teams with a unified, user-friendly platform to engage customers with real-time collaboration tools, share insights, and coordinate the entire aftersales process. This allows them to reduce manual work, focus on higher-value activities, and cut operational costs, ensuring that every dollar spent contributes to measurable business success.

  • More efficient buying and customer support:
    By streamlining customer relationship management and reducing the need for offline interactions, you can save valuable time and resources and focus on high-value tasks instead.
  • ‘One-shop portal’:
    Provide your sales team and customers with the convenience of managing assets, orders, support cases, and more from a single, intuitive portal—boosting satisfaction and reducing cost to serve.
    • Document and File Management:
      Serve up self-guided resources (e.g. FAQs and product demos) to your buyers directly to their personalized dashboard.
    • Order Management:
      Customers have self-service access to order history, tracking, and reordering frequently purchased products.
    • Claims Management:
      Customers can create and submit claims, request a refund, and more, reducing the cost to serve while accelerating the time to resolution.

COST EFFICIENCY, REIMAGINED

FIBRO streamlines purchasing for millions of products with a self-service portal

Increasing sales efficiency at a global scale

FIBRO is a global provider of pressed parts, body shell components, and automation tools, offering millions of products with up to 600 variants. With such an extensive product portfolio, their previous shop environment was complex, fragmented, and difficult to manage, resulting in high maintenance and total cost of ownership (TCO).

In just four months, they launched a self-service portal for FIBRO customers to help lower costs and improve the customer experience. The portal empowers buyers with convenient functionalities for streamlining the online buying journey, enabling them to maximize online shop revenue by delivering high performance, customized options, and a consolidated view of the commercial relationship.

Increased
sales productivity
Grew
market share & revenue
Improved
customer satisfaction

AWS + SPRYKER ADVANTAGE

About Nagarro

Nagarro is a global digital engineering and consulting leader with a full-service offering. Harnessing the power of our Fluidic Enterprise vision and thinking breakthroughs framework, Nagarro helps clients become human-centric, digital-first organizations, augmenting their ability to be responsive, efficient, intimate, creative, and sustainable. Their client-centric, agile, responsible, intelligent, non-hierarchical, global values come together to form their CARING superpower, which denotes a humanistic, people-first way of thinking with a strong emphasis on ethics. Nagarro has a broad and long-standing international customer base, primarily in Europe and North America. This includes many global blue-chip companies, leading independent software vendors (ISVs), other market and industry leaders, and public sector clients. At Nagarro, over 18,300 experts across 37 countries are helping our partners succeed today.

The Nagarro and Spryker Advantage

As a strategic partner of Spryker, Nagarro brings unparalleled knowledge and experience in consulting, implementing, and managing Spryker solutions across industries to deliver successful, tailored solutions that meet organizations’ business needs. Know more about our partnership – What business objectives are you solving for?
Learn more

Transactional or non-transactional?

Self-service capabilities are a key part of a hybrid selling strategy, but not all businesses are ready to jump right in. It’s possible to start with a non-transactional approach, giving you an onramp to drive user adoption before it impacts your cash flows.

Selecting between transactional and non-transactional models depends on your business objectives and how you envision your customer portal supporting sales and service goals, be it simplifying transactions, enhancing engagement, or both. 

Below are key comparison points to help you determine the best fit for your business.



 
Transactional Transactional
Non-transactional Non-transactional
  Purpose
Transactional Allows customers to complete purchases directly within the platform, making it ideal for businesses aiming to streamline ordering processes, drive sales, and boost revenue.
Non-transactional Focuses on enabling account management, service inquiries, and resource access, prioritizing customer support and relationship building over direct commerce.
  Capabilities
Transactional Enables order, asset, and claims management, account-specific pricing, payment processing, and real-time inventory visibility.
Non-transactional Provides direct access to customer support, product manuals, FAQs, and account history.
  Ideal For
Transactional Companies with a high volume of repeat orders or businesses seeking to scale their e-commerce capabilities.
Non-transactional Companies prioritizing customer service, aftersales support, or industries where purchases require personalized negotiation.
  Advantages
Transactional
  • Reduces friction in the buying process.
  • Increases customer convenience and satisfaction.
  • Generates additional revenue through upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
  • Plus, all of the advantages of non-transactional.
Non-transactional
  • Enhances customer relationships through tailored support.
  • Streamlines communication and issue resolution.
  • Reduces reliance on manual processes by centralizing customer resources.

No matter where you choose to start, Spryker is your partner for growth. Because our pre-packaged Self-Service Portal is built on the Spryker platform, you can shift from non-transactional to transactional when you’re ready – there’s no need for a costly rip-and-replace.

The New Aftersales Experience

A Closer Look at Self-service Portals

A Self-service Portal is a one-stop shop that supports the entire customer lifecycle, increasing efficiency, improving customer satisfaction, and driving profitable growth.

For Sales Teams For Sales Teams
For Support Teams For Support Teams
For B2B Buyers For B2B Buyers
For Sales Teams
  • Engage digitally with customers
  • Share personalized communications
  • Support the buying process via Agent Assist
For Support Teams
  • Reduced support ticket volume
  • Faster issue resolution
  • Improve agent productivity
  • Enhanced customer experience and satisfaction
For B2B Buyers
  • Independently discover new products and services
  • Access product information and training
  • Purchase and manage their orders, shipment, etc.
  • Purchase aftersales products and services

SPRYKER ADVANTAGE

Spryker’s Self-service Portal

Transforms fragmented B2B aftersales interactions into seamless, unified experiences, optimizing customer service, enhancing asset utilization, and driving business growth.

Drive Customer Loyalty
Build trust and strengthen engagement with 24/7 access to personalized information and documents.
A Client Dashboard gives customers 24/7 access to track orders, invoices, and account details for greater transparency.

Meet the unique pricing requirements of your B2B customers with Account-Specific Catalogs and Pricing while maximizing revenue and profitability.

Strengthen relationships and deliver the personalized experiences your customers expect with integrated Assisted Buying.

Reduce Cost to Service
Streamline the aftersales process and reduce cost to serve with a unified, user-friendly platform to coordinate activities.
Asset Management enables customers to efficiently organize, track, and access asset details, improving visibility and efficiency.

Claims Management supports the end-to-end claims creation process, enhancing customer satisfaction.




Increase Share of Wallet
Increase Share of Wallet Leverage holistic customer data to personalize catalogs and create cross-and upsell opportunities.
Allows customers to schedule, modify, and track Service Appointments effortlessly.

Increase sales by capturing cross-sell and upsell opportunities, reducing bounce rates while increasing AOV with Product Relations




Maximize Efficiencies
Enable faster, more efficient buying and support experiences with centrally managed aftersales support.
Customers have self-service Order Management access to place orders, view order history, track, and reorder frequently purchased products.

Docs Management offers a centralized repository for secure file storage and improving collaboration.




Ready to transform your business?

Start driving growth today while preparing for tomorrow

In a world where customer expectations are higher than ever, and innovation is accelerating at breakneck speed, Spryker is the partner you need to unlock new avenues for growth and profitability so that your brand remains at the forefront of digital commerce. It’s time to optimize costs, drive revenue, and enhance customer experiences so that you can respond quickly to market volatility and leapfrog your competition in the race to capture market share.

Book a meeting with one of our experts to learn how we can help you make smarter decisions.

Book Meeting now

About Spryker

Spryker is the leading global composable commerce platform for enterprises with sophisticated business models to enable growth, innovation, and differentiation. Designed specifically for sophisticated transactional businesses, Spryker’s easy-to-use, headless, API-first model offers a best-of-breed approach that provides businesses the flexibility to adapt, scale, and quickly go to market while facilitating faster time-to-value throughout their digital transformation journey. As a global platform leader for B2B and B2C Enterprise Marketplaces, IoT Commerce, and Unified Commerce, Spryker has empowered 150+ global enterprise customers worldwide and is trusted by brands such as ALDI, Siemens, ZF Friedrichshafen, and Ricoh. Spryker is a privately held technology company headquartered in Berlin and New York backed by world class investors such as TCV, One Peak, Project A, Cherry Ventures, and Maverick Capital. Learn more at spryker.com.

Spryker Website