Strategy & Portals
Customer portals that create engagement
Your existing customers expect more than just good products: they want easy, digital access to services, information, and processes. With a well-thought-out customer portal strategy, you achieve exactly that. We combine platform strategy, SAP and PIM expertise, and UX know-how into portal concepts that are used daily and ensure digital competitiveness.
Customer Portal Strategy
Most customer portals are built for purchasing. They are used by all others.
The typical project dynamics are always the same: IT defines the technology, sales describes the functions, management releases the budget. What emerges works for the buyer who places an order during office hours. It does not work for the maintenance technician looking for a spare part at night, the plant manager checking availabilities, or the field service technician.
A portal is a promise of independence. If it doesn't fulfill this, it merely shifts work around: away from internal services and towards your customers. Therefore, a portal strategy starts not with function lists, but with the question of who opens the portal, when, and for what purpose, and what that person needs to accomplish at that moment.
Then comes the technology. We consider customer portals from platform strategy to technology selection, with B2B experience in SAP connection, ERP integration, and DXP architectures. The key is the architecture: those who build modularly and API-based can expand step by step without building everything anew.
References
Strong partnerships. For over 20 years.
Renowned B2B companies trust us with complex portal and platform projects: strategy, UX, SAP integration, process automation. Know-how that has a measurable impact.
LET'S TALK!
A portal that your customers open on their own. Start with an inventory of roles and processes.
We determine which roles your portal truly needs to serve and which three processes belong in the first development stage.
Retain and expand existing customers strategically
Customer portals bundle services, strengthen customer loyalty, and automate processes. We combine B2B depth with technical experience to build portals that your customers use daily.
Everything in one place
Your customers find orders, inquiries, product information, and documents centrally in one place. This creates a consistent, efficient digital point of contact.
Self-service that eases the burden
Automated processes and self-service functions reduce manual effort on both sides and noticeably speed up workflows. Find spare parts, track orders, retrieve documentation, even at two in the morning.
Revenue potential through digital proximity
A well-thought-out portal actively accompanies your customer journey, strengthens customer loyalty, and creates targeted opportunities for up-selling and cross-selling.
Strategy before technology
We consider customer portals from platform strategy to technology selection, with deep B2B experience in SAP connection, ERP integration, and DXP architectures.
Together with synaigy, we were able to implement a B2B information portal to provide ERP information via a web-based interface. Through a partnership and professional collaboration, we were able to jointly tackle challenges at eye level. With synaigy's Managed Commerce, we can now ensure a sustainable, secure, and highly scalable operation.
With the new Uhlmann website, we achieve a more effective presence and offer our customers a high-quality digital offering along with the customer portal, reflecting the quality and competence of the Uhlmann brand.
The innovations on dkb.de and in online banking aim to contribute to even easier and more intuitive usability of our offering, providing our customers with a quick overview of their finances.
References
Reference projects from practice
Three portal projects for B2B companies from mechanical engineering, pharmaceutical packaging, and steel.
A portal is not used because it has many functions, but because it relieves a specific person of a specific task. We often know these people better than the list of functions.
Our approach
From strategy to system selection. This is how portals are created that technically function and truly ease the workload of their users.
Discovery and Analysis
We analyze existing processes and systems and talk to the roles that should open the portal daily later on.
Portal strategy and concept
A sustainable portal concept with a range of functions, information architecture, and prioritization of use cases based on impact.
Technology selection and platform design
The technical foundation is defined, modular and API-based, so that later development stages do not fail at the foundation.
Process automation and implementation planning
Relevant B2B processes are automated for digital self-service and put into a realistic development sequence.
How a portal strategy must be measured
Portal projects rarely fail due to technology. These figures show what we focus on instead.
3 to 6
Months until the productive portal MVP
A focused MVP with parts catalog, order history, and documentation can go live quickly. It is then iteratively expanded.
4
Roles a B2B portal typically needs to serve
Purchasing, maintenance, plant management, and field service. Serving only the first loses the other three.
40 %
fewer standard inquiries in internal services
After introducing reliable self-service functions with a customer.
KNOWLEDGE TO TAKE AWAY
Whitepaper
In-depth knowledge for your portal decision, available for free download.
Frequently asked questions about customer portal strategy
Self-service around the clock: find and order spare parts, track orders, retrieve technical documentation, check availabilities in real-time. This reduces wait times and dependence on internal services on both sides.
A focused MVP with core functions like parts catalog, order history, and documentation can go live in three to six months. It is then iteratively expanded, based on real user feedback and business requirements.
It strongly depends on the scope. The architecture is crucial: those who build modularly and API-based can expand gradually without rebuilding everything. We clarify this before the first effort estimate.
A shop sells, a portal supports the relationship after the purchase. In practice, both overlap: reorder, order status, and documentation often belong in the same interface. The question is less about shop or portal but rather which tasks belong together in one place.
Typically ERP or SAP for orders and availability, PIM for product data, CRM for customer relationships and a DAM for documents. Which connection is needed first arises from the prioritized use cases, not the other way around.
By talking to the actual user roles before the design, not just the project participants. Maintenance, plant management, and field service have different tasks than purchasing, and they decide whether the portal is used in everyday life.
The functions that cover the most common reason your customers call today. In the industry, these are usually spare parts, order status, and technical documentation. Everything else follows in development stages.
If desired, we take over operation and further development, or we hand it over to your team. Concept, architectural decisions, and measurement setup remain with you in any case.
LET'S TALK!
Customer portal strategy for B2B: Your roadmap in the discovery call
We clarify which processes your portal should take over, which systems need to be connected for it, and what a realistic first development stage looks like.
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