Business to Business

The B2B business I have chosen to research is Grainger.com, an E-distributor that supplies products and services directly to businesses. Grainer.com is a leading Industrial supply company providing top quality brands their customers can trust along with product services with fast convenient shipping. Grainger has a diverse customer base comprised of facilities maintenance professionals from many types of businesses such as; schools, prisons, military installations, manufacturing companies, the U.S. postal service, contractors and many more.

In 1995 Grainger launched the corporate Web site, and by 1996 they were taking orders. Recently they introduced a mobile app to provide their customers the full functionality of on their Smartphone that they find on Grainger’s website. (Stelton-Holtmeier, 2012)

Grainger.com has succeeded in creating a website that meets their customers’ expectations. They have kept the site visually appealing by keeping graphics to a minimum while using a white background with black text. This along with headings, bullet points and short paragraphs make it easy to read. The web site is easy to navigate with a set of header tabs at the top of each page that are clearly labeled along with the different categories on the left edge for each header. The web site has many features including the ability to create an account providing; the ability to quickly reorder items from past orders, check on the status of their orders, and store lists of products for easy reordering. The web site has a search feature that customers can use to search for the product they are looking for.

Grainger.com has an Order Management System (OMS) that allows customers to manage spend limits and order approvals. Business customers have the ability to set up their OMS with the details they choose, they can set up cost centers, spending limits, and order approval cycle. Each business has its own dashboard in which they can view requests, orders waiting approval, order...