Insite Software and Episerver: How Episerver’s Acquisition of Insite Provides a Stronger Foundation for B2B Commerce Growth

By Lori McDonald

On December 16, 2019, Episerver announced a definitive agreement to acquire Insite Software, a leader in the B2B digital commerce space.  As an Episerver systems implementer with a specialty in B2B digital commerce, we are very excited for this acquisition. While it is less than 2 months into the combination, the product and engineering teams are aligned and excited about the near-term and future product roadmap, with clear synergies around best-in-class digital experience, personalization, commerce and analytics. Great news for Episerver and Insite current and prospective customers!  

Here are 3 opportunities for Insite customers to grow revenue

#1 Use Strategic Content to Differentiate

Digital giants, like Amazon Business and Grainger, are disrupting traditional B2B sales channels, putting pressure on manufacturers and distributors to more effectively leverage digital commerce. To effectively compete with these digital commerce giants, you need to be able to differentiate your business by demonstrating your subject matter expertise, by leveraging content and commerce in the same digital experience.

Episerver has been positioned as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management for the fifth year in a row. In addition, Episerver is a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms. Insite is a leader in Forrester’s B2B eCommerce wave, offering an all-in-one eCommerce platform with content management capabilities--a fit for industrial businesses that are primarily focused on building their B2B eCommerce foundation. As these companies progress in their digital strategy, there will be opportunities to leverage Episerver’s advanced CMS and enhanced content capabilities to support strategic growth for Insite customers. With Insite is it harder to have an effective cross-channel user experience that is easy for marketing users to maintain, with no distributed workflow, collaboration or drag-and-drop editing. 

#2 Provide a Personalized Experience

Your ability to compete against much larger digital competitors requires a personalized experience that saves your customer time, helps them find what they are looking for easier, and anticipates their needs. Episerver provides you with these capabilities through their investments in machine leaning technology that automates content recommendations, product recommendations, triggers emails based on events on your digital site, and tracks the entire customer journey (offline and online) to enable you to better tailor future experiences. Episerver’s acquisition of Idio is further demonstration that Episerver will be a leader in personalization features that are easy to manage and realize value with. Insite customers will be able to benefit from the personalization tools within the Episerver suite, and the implementation of these capabilities is likely to be one of the most straightforward paths for Insite customers to see benefit from the Episerver relationship. 

#3 Building a 360-Degree Customer View

Episerver has a suite of products including Visitor Intelligence, Marketing Automation, Personalized Search and Navigation, Content Recommendations, Product Recommendations, and more that leverage Episerver’s Customer Data Platform as the central repository for customer data. This enables you to build a 360-degree view of your customer that can be leveraged throughout their digital journey. You are able to load data from outside sources into Episerver’s Customer Data platform and build custom segments that can be used to create digital experiences that are the most valuable to your customers.

Here are 4 benefits for Episerver customers

#1 Deep Understanding of B2B Needs

Insite Software has a devoted user base of manufacturers and distributors and they have paid attention to their feedback to improve the product. Bottom line, Insite’s laser focus on B2B has allowed them to build more core B2B features and capabilities, with a majority of requirements met “out-of-the-box” via configurations. Insite has also built relationships with many manufacturing and distributor vertical associations and buying groups. These groups have their ear to the ground in terms of what their customers need. This knowledge will help inform the Episerver product roadmap to better serve B2B commerce customers.

#2 Developers Skilled in B2B Commerce

The acquisition of Insite Software provides Episerver with a team that is skilled in B2B digital commerce software development. They have built helpful B2B features and functionality like including easy-to-use Request for Quote capabilities, credit accounts, and enabling sales reps to place orders on behalf of customers. This team and the features they have built for Insite will enable you to leverage these capabilities sooner for your Episerver site.

#3 Data Integration Framework

Insite Software offers an integration architecture that has pre-built integrations for Epicor Prophet21, IFS, Acumatica and Infor (SX.e, A+, and CloudSuite). Episerver could potentially use a similar approach and leverage the work for these integrations to provide pre-built ERP integrations for Episerver. This would save time and cost for Episerver customers integrating with their ERP.

#4 Combined Analytics

Where Episerver is strong in terms of behavior web user data and machine learning for a personalized experience, Insite focuses on leveraging ERP data to create recommendations (i.e. product recommendations based on ERP order history).  This presents a great opportunity for a unified view of the customer including behavior web user data and the account ERP data in a way that no other platform can match for B2B.

Shopping for B2B Digital Commerce? Good News

Many Episerver customers who sell B2B had considered Insite before making their purchase, and vice-versa. Both platforms have different strengths in the market that can complement each other. For prospective customers who are considering the purchase of B2B commerce software, this acquisition is great news. If you aren’t certain which product is the right fit for you – Episerver or Insite Software, we can help. The good news is that both products are part of the Episerver family, and we can assist you in determining which is the best fit for your needs. Setup a time to talk with us about how our deep B2B commerce experience can help position your digital commerce solution for success.

About Lori McDonald

Lori graduated from Purdue University with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer-Electrical Engineering and leads Brilliance Business Solutions with over 20 years of computer engineering and software development experience.  She is an Episerver EMVP, a Microsoft Certified Professional and a regular contributor on Practical eCommerce. Her status as a recognized industry expert has resulted in regular speaking engagements at business conferences.

Follow Lori McDonald on Linkdin

Related Content

  • Weekly Educational Series

    Who Should Read This? Manufacturers and distributors looking for ideas how to grow their business leveraging digital commerce
    Need to Know: There are quick wins you can put in place without large investments

  • RFPs are Flawed

    Who Should Read This? Organizations using request for proposal (RFPs) documents
    Need to Know: Background questions are important. Doing your due diligence is important. Asking overly complicated questions to make yourself look smart, are not important. Ask yourself, what do we really need to know about this company in order to qualify them as a vendor. And if 100 questions are necessary, can you at least give that company the opportunity to present in person (or at minimum, web meeting)? Sure, that adds additional commitments to the decision makers but this project required a detailed RFP process; that same level of detail should be applied when reviewing the responses.

  • Year-end Showdown: Epi vs. Magento vs. Sitecore

    Who Should Read This? Decision-makers of B2B sellers looking for the best digital commerce platform.
    Need to Know: We have created a convenient free downloadable chart summarizing my last two articles Sitecore vs Episerver: Why Episerver is the Better Choice for Your B2B Business and Magento vs Episerver for B2B Digital Commerce: Revisited.

  • Magento vs Episerver for B2B Digital Commerce: Revisited

    Who Should Read This? B2B sellers considering Magento as their digital commerce platform.
    Need to Know: For you to grow against much larger online competitors, you need to select a software platform that enables you to demonstrate that you understand your customer, their pain points, and your products and services.

  • Sitecore vs Episerver: Why Episerver is the Better Choice for Your B2B Business

    Who Should Read This? Anyone currently using Sitecore or considering Sitecore for their B2B business.
    Need to Know: We reviewed Sitecore and Episerver several years back and made the choice to partner with Episerver because we believed Episerver’s ability to support efficient upgrades along with a strong commerce and content framework and innovative personalization tools was the best fit for our customers.

  • Episerver Digital Commerce Tool Box

    Who Should Read This? B2B digital commerce professionals using, or considering using, Episerver as the digital commerce platform.
    Need to Know: To help you learn more about the Epi platform, here are our top twelve Epi digital commerce resources, a.k.a. the Brilliance Episerver Digital Commerce Toolbox.