Case Verkkokauppa.com: Fully digital B2B sales

Verkkokauppa.com is a large Finnish online retailer, very well known locally for their remarkable consumer sales. However, the company also has a notable B2B sales division, receiving electronic orders and sending back e-invoices via OpusCapita Business Network. This enables direct data exchange between the supplier’s and buyers’ ERP systems.

This interview with B2B Sales Director Lari Hevonoja discusses how Verkkokauppa.com leverages the benefits of this digitalization and how it helps the company reach their strategic goals.

Video: Lari Hevonoja from Verkkokauppa.com interviewed by Hanna Backman from OpusCapita.

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Growing the B2B sales

Started from garage sales 30 years ago, Verkkokauppa.com is today stock-listed in Finland with a turnover of 570M euros in 2021. The company is especially known by the Finnish consumers for its B2C retail, both online and in local megastores.

Less well known, Verkkokauppa.com also has nearly 50 000 companies as B2B customers that regularly make purchases from the B2B sales side of the retail. Last year, the company’s B2B turnover reached 120M euros. The B2B division has worked through a lot of changes to serve the B2B customers even better, today offering enterprise-level B2B customers also a possibility to place orders directly via their procurement system, using the OpusCapita Order-to-Cash messaging service.

E-orders for better B2B customer service

One of the important aspects of better B2B customer service is offering the possibility for exchanging orders and invoices directly between Verkkokauppa.com and the buyers’ ERP systems. “For this, we use OpusCapita as a partner. I think e-invoices are quite popular in companies, but to have e-orders coming directly into your ERP system is not so familiar to all. For example, we have customers that use SAP procurement systems, and thanks to OpusCapita, we get orders from there directly into our system. It’s also very convenient for the customer,” says Hevonoja.

For Verkkokauppa.com, doing business digitally is incorporated in the company’s core, and offering a smooth digital service also to B2B customers is a natural part of it. “It’s much faster, it’s more reliable as there are less human errors, it reduces costs and it really helps in creating a good customer experience for our customers,” Hevonoja says. Coupling the e-orders with e-invoices further creates scalability for Verkkokauppa.com to grow. “The faster we get the orders in, the faster we can send out the deliveries. Our cut-off time promises that if an order is in by 2 PM, we ensure delivery the following day,” Hevonoja continues.

All in all, Hevonoja stresses that digitalization helps suppliers to do better business with your customers, and encourages all companies to look into e-orders as well. Pioneering in digitalization, for Verkkokauppa.com it’s a part of the core existence. “With system integration and interoperability, you end up creating a sort of an ecosystem with your customer, or, one could say, you become a part of your customer’s ecosystem,” Hevonoja concludes.

That, indeed, is something for all suppliers to reach for.