Connect with Arno Ham:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnoham/
Website: https://www.sana-commerce.com/
Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network Podcast. Our guest today is Arno Ham. Arno is the Chief Product Officer of Sana Commerce. Sana helps manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers succeed by fostering lasting relationships with customers who depend on them and making their SAP or Microsoft Dynamics ERP and eCommerce work as one. He studied computer science and has been a driven eCommerce manager for years for big (retail) accounts such as Heineken, AkzoNobel, and Michelin. In his free time, Arno enjoys maintaining the webshop for the band and music society he plays in. So Arno, welcome to the show.
Arno Ham: thank you. Thank you, Lisa, for having me. I'm excited.
Lisa Ryan: So, share a little about your background and what led you to do what you're doing.
Arno Ham: Everything is with technology. I am a nerd. I started computer science. I started working here at a company that was an agency digital agency. We built many web store websites back then, mainly for these big weak retailers. But at some point, we came across businesses with other needs. B2B companies - and it was already more than 10, 15 years ago.
By helping them, we realized how we could help B2B companies, manufacturing companies, or wholesalers to do business online. , you need to do something differently. We can talk more about it later today. But the funny thing is that was the moment when Sana was born because we said, Hey, guess what? You talked in the intro about the long-lasting relationships that our customers want with their customers. In B2B, that's important. If you do, if you're shopping online as a consumer, you may buy something that you wear at the lowest price or where you can get the quickest shipment.
But in B2B, if you need to have supplies every day or multiple times a day. It needs to be good, and you have trustworthy partners, et cetera. And to make that happen, to transform that, to put that from, let's say, all those business processes before, let's say, non-digital with or by phone or by fax or by email to make the digital.
A lot of complexity is involved, and Sana was born. We were making that complexity easy by making ERP and e-commerce work as one because in that ERP, these systems that these companies are driving on, I would say where all your customers are, your order details, your transactions, your inventory, all that logic around it that makes you unique.
You need to open that up to the world to ensure you can automate things. We are key players here in what we also call a digital transformation. We have around 1500 customers worldwide running SAP or Microsoft Dynamics as their ERP. We are helping them create a B2B eCommerce environment with which they can serve their customers.
With B2B, it's just the beginning. Not all companies are doing digital commerce yet. They're starting with it. We are right on that wave. That was the shortest version I could give you, Lisa, but we could take it from here.
Lisa Ryan: And when you talk about, back in the day, you had more of that personal connection, talking to people on the phone and maybe seeing them in person. Now we're bringing in that whole element of technology and digitalization. How do you continue to work with your customers and keep that personal presence when everything is so technology-based, so you're not just another button on a keyboard?
Arno Ham: I love that question. There is a lot of complexity involved in making that relationship, let's say, more or less the same. But to give you a couple of examples or share a couple of customer stories, The important thing is that if you are a B2B buyer, as we call it, somebody needs to purchase something to do their job.
So let's say you are a gardener or a contractor and need to work at some house; you require equipment, building materials, etc. You could call or go to a store and get your supplies. And you get that personal touch that you say, Hey, you had this pricing. We have agreements about that. You are a customer that is here every week. So, we have these agreements. But if you go online, you want to have that same experience. You want to give discounts, for example, or trade agreements. And you need to bring that online.
And that is that example of the complexity we are solving, but it's so important. It sounds so stupid or simple that you must solve these things, but making that happen in your world is complex. And that's what we are solving. So that's one.
It's about real-time pricing, inventory, product information, and selection. So all these things you need to have transparency and with whatever channel your B2B buyer is, reaching you as a company, as a manufacturing company, if it is over the phone or via the web store or another, or in the store itself, you want to have that same price, the same inventory levels, and the same product description.
Because otherwise, you get an issue. You gain if the price is different online than in the store, then you harm the relationship, and you say, Hey, what's going on here? If I want to place an online order, the price is different. It's not what we agreed upon, harming the relationship.
So that's why we are all targeting that or not a relationship. It should be as convenient as if somebody's talking about it. But you need to translate that whole relationship into a digital world. And we are solving many of these complex things and making them simple.
And that's just one aspect of it. But we can also talk about, let's say, all the problems that manufacturing companies are struggling with. Still, I think this is where we see companies succeed in adopting their digital platform in this area, making sure that you supply total custom convenience as we say it. The features are that you can place these complex orders every moment of the day, 24/7 per day, seven days a week and that you have reliability without any compromise, which means it's real-time. The inventory is accurate. So, if you, that's not that you, if you're ordering something and then the salesperson or support person is calling you and saying, no, sorry, you just placed the order. But we have yet to get it in stock. That's, that is a pain, of course. So we are solving that and that you can. If you are also placing an order that the company is directly processing, it's a whole process to bring it online. So we are helping our customers with that. And it's a complex thing. But if you have done that, there are a lot of benefits for you as a manufacturing organization.
Lisa Ryan: Timing is such a crucial aspect of it because we expect that immediate gratification when we want to find something and get it online. And often, the person who receives the order is the first to respond to the request for a quote. Yes. The first one they reach is that they can do it quickly, as you said. To see what's in stock to get the correct pricing and place the order versus waiting for a couple of days or even a couple of hours for the sales rep to call him back and then go through the quote process, and it's lengthy all that stuff. Digitization has sped that up and it's an expectation now.
Arno Ham: Correct. Especially on the newer generations. They are used to living on their phones, to do everything from there. So if you are not opening that channel for them, you will have a missed opportunity, or you will, in the end, you will miss business, and the competition will take it for sure.
Lisa Ryan: We talk about some of the good things that are going on, and then, of course, in manufacturing, there are all kinds of issues. In inventory management and supply chain, we saw a lot of disruption issues because of the pandemic. And then the war in Ukraine. What's your take on this, and what's the role of digital and e-commerce in inventory management?
Arno Ham: Yeah, so for inventory management, all the things you just mentioned, it has been a couple of hectic years. And we are still in these in this period where we have a lot of manufacturing companies in our customer base. And when talking to them, they all struggle with the same kind of issues that they say. So we do not know at some point in time if we had something in stock or when we will get it back in, or that we get our inventory levels where we want to have it, or if the price of a product was differentiating all the time because the production cost the raw materials, the pricing for that was changing a lot because of the situation we had in the world.
And what is so essential if you have these kinds of changes or need to adapt your business has. So, for example, if something is unavailable in stock because you cannot produce it, or is there something else? There is just a high month; they must ensure how to deal with it.
Are you going to prioritize it for a specific customer group? Are you saying, hey, these customers need it more than others, or are you showing the real-time values and informing your customers to give that transparency, saying, Hey, sorry, it is not available, but it will be there in a month or so? So all that information exchange and transparency contribute to keeping these relationships in good shape.
Because if you need to do that over the phone, you will be burning in on calls, and so on. But on the other end, if you do not have accurate numbers, you also will, once again, people will start ordering, and they will get issues because you cannot deliver. After all, you have problems
