Home Virto Commerce blog All about Customer Portals for B2B Pharma Sales

All about Customer Portals for B2B Pharma Sales

Oct 26, 2022 • 8 min

More and more B2B companies desire to provide seamless customer experience to beat the competition, gain market share, and the clientele's loyalty. The B2B market moves towards building holistic B2B customer portals that provide superior CX for all purchasing scenarios and have the needed self-service capabilities in one system.

Following the common trend, the pharma industry and pharmaceutical companies are no exception.

The Top Requirements of Pharma B2B Customer Portals

Unlike the B2C world, in B2B, almost every industry has specifications and unique customer experience characteristics. Thus, CX improvement in a particular field requires an industry-specific digital commerce solution.

So, what are the distinguishing characteristics of B2B customer portals for Pharmacy sales and the pharmaceutical industry?

If you would like to launch your very own B2B portal for the pharmaceuticals industry, here are some requirements and determinants to consider:

The government regulations and licensing policies; 

  • Complex onboarding process;
  • Complicated catalog structure; 
  • Challenging butch ID tracking; 
  • Intricate access, roles, and permissions; 
  • Sophisticated pharmaceuticals logistics.

Weighing all these complexities, pharmaceutical companies should carefully choose their B2B portal provider and make sure that the eCommerce solution can address these requirements.

Now, let's further discuss the major requirements in more detail.

B2B Catalog Structure for Pharma Products

Government regulation and complex scenarios dictate a sophisticated B2B catalog structure for pharma customer portals. 

Firstly, search and flexible filtering should make many distinctive product properties available. These properties may include the manufacturer information, manufacturing location, active ingredients, batch number (expiry date, product details of the medical devices, the shelf life of medication), licenses, and more. 

Complex catalog structure assumes different filtering combinations as well. For example, some products, the so-called generic medications, might be manufactured by multiple companies and share the same name but have different prices. 
B2B pharma portal requires complex filtering capabilities by active ingredients, the manufacturer, batches, and license permission details to name a few. 
A properly set-up digital catalog guarantees a seamless customer experience on the front end, where a buyer quickly finds the desired product using search and filtering configuration.

The B2B Customer Onboarding Process in Pharma Industry

Due to the regulations and licensing policies, each B2B pharmaceutical company customer should provide detailed information about their organization, including all the license data. This information should also be registered in the digital commerce solution for further product access control.

The B2B portal should support a multilevel customer structure, i.e., different customers have different properties, access levels, and permissions.

Complexity with catalog access

Government regulation and complex scenarios dictate a sophisticated B2B catalog structure for pharma customer portals.

Firstly, search and flexible filtering should make many distinctive product properties available. These properties may include the manufacturer information, manufacturing location, active ingredients, batch number (expiry date, product details of the medical devices, the shelf life of medication), licenses, and more.

Complex catalog structure assumes different filtering combinations as well. For example, some products, the so-called generic medications, might be manufactured by multiple companies and share the same name but have different prices. 
B2B pharma portal requires complex filtering capabilities by active ingredients, the manufacturer, batches, and license permission details to name a few.

A properly set-up digital catalog guarantees a seamless customer experience on the front end, where a buyer quickly finds the desired product using search and filtering configuration.

Batch IDs control

Batch IDs control is a crucial part of pharmacy logistics.
Each unit of a product has а batch ID number assigned. It is required to trace batch ID for every pharmacy item sold. The digital portal should distinguish different batches and keep track of each batch stock. While the master data will typically be in the ERP system, the digital commerce solution should "know" the batch IDs of every product item sold. 
This requirement adds yet another must-have capability for the pharma B2B portal.

Non-trivial logistics of pharmaceuticals 

Different medications and drugs require special transportation conditions. Some medicines must be transported in a fridge, some tolerate only a particular temperature range, and some don't need special transportation conditions. 
It means that if a purchased order includes medicines with different transportation condition requirements, the order delivery must be split into multiple shipments, and the customer should be able to keep track of each shipment independently.

The B2B customer portal for pharma companies must be able to support the non-trivial logistics prerequisites of this notoriously complex industry.

The Pharma B2B Customer Portal to Choose

Industry leaders like Bosch, HEINEKEN, Lavazza, and more have chosen Virto Commerce B2B Portal to digitize their routes-to-market and transparently control B2B relationships through one unified system. 

Here are the powerful B2B capabilities you get by choosing Virto as your Pharma B2B Customer Portal provider:
• Self-service B2B digital portal with unified eCommerce experience. 
• Seamless integration to your ERP and other systems, even the legacy ones. 
• Strong partner network and implementation team.
• Unique Virto Atomic Architecture™ allows you to scale and extend the solution to cover all your digital ambitions. 
• All the necessary ready-to-use B2B capabilities, including sophisticated B2B catalog, logistics, shipment and order tracking, contracts, invoicing modules, and more. 

If digital profit increase and CX improvement is on your agenda, feel free to book a B2B portal demo with our experts. 

Conclusions

According to Forbes, 74% of buyers are more likely to buy based on good customer experiences alone. Like in every industry, pharmaceutical companies are under enormous pressure to provide superior customer experience and digitize routes-to-market and pharma sales. 
Some pharma giants are already accomplishing their digital transformation objectives. The others must adapt and embrace change in the rapidly expanding and highly competitive medication, healthcare, and med devices markets.

Book Your Discovery Session with Our Digital Experts

You might also like...
B2B eCommerce for Distributors and Dealers: Challenges, Best Practices, Examples B2B eCommerce for Distributors and Dealers: Challenges, Best Practices, Examples
 Nikolay Sidelnikov
Nikolay Sidelnikov
Jan 16, 2024 • 4 min
Driving B2B Excellence: TOP-15 CX Metrics and Customer Service KPIs  Driving B2B Excellence: TOP-15 CX Metrics and Customer Service KPIs 
 Marina Conquest
Marina Conquest
Jan 12, 2024 • 10 min
Understanding B2B Customer Experience (CX): Best Practices for Improvement Understanding B2B Customer Experience (CX): Best Practices for Improvement
 Elena Bekker
Elena Bekker
Jan 11, 2024 • 10 min
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved.