Manufacturers continue to face both a skills gap and an applicant gap. A 2024 study from Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute estimated that the U.S. manufacturing industry could need as many as 3.8 million additional employees between 2024 and 2033. Without meaningful changes, roughly 1.9 million of those positions could remain unfilled.
Digital commerce cannot solve those workforce challenges on its own. It cannot create career paths, improve workplace culture, train skilled production employees, or replace the knowledge that experienced people have developed over many years.
It can, however, help existing teams spend less time on repetitive work. It can make product knowledge easier to access, give customers more ways to complete routine tasks, and reduce the number of processes that depend on one person being available.
For manufacturers managing limited capacity, those improvements can make a meaningful difference.
What Digital Commerce Can—and Cannot—Address
Workforce challenges have many causes, including retirements, changing skill requirements, recruiting competition, training needs, scheduling, career development, and the employee experience. A website or customer portal addresses only part of that picture.
Digital tools may help a manufacturer:
- Capture and distribute product knowledge
- Reduce routine order entry
- Make repeat purchasing easier
- Give customers and sales representatives access to current information
- Reduce avoidable product and order inquiries
- Provide newer employees with a dependable reference
- Connect customer activity with inventory, pricing, and fulfillment systems
Digital tools cannot, by themselves:
- Develop the skills required on the production floor
- Create effective training and apprenticeship programs
- Improve compensation, scheduling, safety, or workplace culture
- Replace succession planning
- Transfer all of an experienced employee’s judgment into software
- Make an unclear or inconsistent process work automatically
The goal is not to replace people. It is to give customers and employees better access to information and reduce the work that does not require human expertise.
Make Product Knowledge Easier to Access
Manufacturers often depend on a relatively small number of experienced employees who understand the products, applications, replacement parts, and exceptions better than anyone else.
That expertise is valuable. It can also create a bottleneck when customers, sales representatives, or newer employees must wait for the same person to answer every question.
A useful first step is to identify the knowledge that can be documented and made easier to find. That might include:
- Product specifications
- Replacement-part relationships
- Compatibility information
- Equipment diagrams
- Technical documents
- Installation instructions
- Frequently asked questions
- Troubleshooting guidance
- Approved substitutions
- Ordering requirements
For example, one manufacturer created a replacement-parts experience organized around the equipment a customer already owned. Rather than searching through a broad catalog, the customer could select the machine and view the relevant parts.
Linked diagrams can make this experience even more useful. A buyer can identify a component visually, confirm the part number, and move directly to the corresponding product information.
That does not remove the need for knowledgeable support. It gives customers and employees a dependable starting point and reserves expert time for questions that genuinely require experience and judgment.
Treat Knowledge as an Ongoing Responsibility
A digital knowledge center is not complete when the initial content is published. Products change, parts are replaced, documents are revised, and new questions emerge.
Before creating one, clarify:
- Which knowledge should be documented
- Who confirms that the information is accurate
- Which system or team owns the source information
- Who updates it when products change
- Which information should be public
- Which information should be limited to customers, partners, or employees
- How users will search and navigate the content
- How outdated or conflicting information will be identified
Without clear ownership, a knowledge center can become another place where information is incomplete or unreliable.
The goal is not to document everything at once. Start with the questions and workflows that consume the most time or depend most heavily on a small number of people.
Support Both Self-Service and Human Expertise
Self-service is valuable when the task is routine and the information needed to complete it is dependable. It is less appropriate when the buyer needs technical guidance, the consequences of choosing incorrectly are significant, or the purchase involves unusual requirements.
A strong manufacturing ecommerce experience supports both paths.
Self-service may work well for:
- Reordering a previously purchased item
- Finding a replacement part for known equipment
- Checking product availability
- Accessing technical documents
- Viewing order status
- Submitting a standard quote request
- Ordering common supplies or low-value parts
Human support may still be important for:
- Confirming compatibility
- Selecting equipment for a new application
- Configuring a complex product
- Evaluating a high-risk replacement
- Reviewing unusual shipping or installation requirements
- Managing a large or negotiated purchase
The goal is not to make every customer solve every problem alone. It is to give buyers an efficient path for predictable needs while making knowledgeable help easy to reach when the situation is more complex.
Reduce Repetitive Work for Existing Teams
Manufacturing sales and service teams may spend meaningful time entering routine orders, looking up inventory, confirming prices, locating documents, or answering the same product questions repeatedly.
When ecommerce is connected with the systems that manage products, customers, pricing, inventory, and orders, it can reduce some of that manual work.
For one manufacturer, self-service ordering created a more efficient way to handle small, routine parts orders. Sales representatives did not need to devote the same amount of time to low-dollar transactions and could focus more attention on complex opportunities and customer relationships.
Another organization gave representatives access to inventory and ordering tools outside normal office hours. That made it easier to serve customers without waiting for another team to look up information or enter the order.
These benefits do not come from the storefront alone. They depend on the information and processes behind it.
Connect the Full Ordering Workflow
An online order only reduces work when the supporting systems and rules allow it to move forward dependably.
Before automating a workflow, determine:
- Which system owns the product information
- Where customer-specific pricing is maintained
- How inventory and availability are calculated
- Which account permissions apply
- What must be reviewed before an order is accepted
- How the order reaches the ERP or fulfillment system
- How integration failures will be detected
- Who handles exceptions
- Which situations still require human approval
For example, making replacement parts available online may require more than creating product pages. The experience may also depend on accurate equipment relationships, current pricing, availability, approved substitutions, shipping rules, and customer eligibility.
If that information is incomplete, automation can move an incorrect order through the process more quickly.
The goal is not to automate a process before it is understood. Start by mapping the information, decisions, and exceptions involved. Then identify which steps are predictable enough for self-service and which still benefit from a person’s judgment.
Use Digital Tools to Support New Employees
Product information that helps customers can also support newer sales, service, and support employees.
A searchable source of approved specifications, diagrams, documents, and product relationships can give employees a dependable reference as they learn. It may reduce the need to interrupt an experienced colleague for every routine question.
This does not replace hands-on training, mentoring, or real-world experience. It supports those efforts by making foundational information easier to access.
Useful employee-facing tools may include:
- Searchable product documentation
- Guided product selectors
- Equipment and replacement-part relationships
- Internal notes or service guidance
- Common customer scenarios
- Clear escalation paths
- Approved answers to recurring questions
The information should be designed around the employee’s task, not simply copied from a technical database. A new team member needs to understand what the information means, when it applies, and when to involve someone with more experience.
Use Your Digital Presence to Communicate Real Career Opportunities
Prospective employees may visit a manufacturer’s website and other digital channels before deciding whether to apply. That makes the company’s online presence part of the recruiting experience—but a modern-looking ecommerce site is not enough by itself.
Candidates may want to understand:
- What the company makes
- How its products are used
- What the work environment is like
- Which technologies employees use
- What training is available
- How people develop their careers
- What scheduling and benefits look like
- How safety is supported
- What the application process involves
- What happens after they apply
Use the website to present real evidence rather than broad claims about innovation. Show the equipment, processes, products, and people behind the business. Explain available career paths and training opportunities clearly.
The careers experience should also be easy to use on a mobile device, accessible, and direct about the next steps.
A polished website cannot compensate for an employee experience that does not match its message. The digital presence should represent the company accurately and help candidates make an informed decision.
Measure Whether the Investment Is Helping
Digital improvements do not automatically reduce workload or increase customer adoption. Their value depends on the quality of the information, how well the tools fit existing workflows, and whether customers and employees use them.
Before implementing a change, establish a baseline. Depending on the workflow, useful measures may include:
- The number of routine product inquiries
- Average time required to answer a common question
- Manual order-entry volume
- Time spent processing small orders
- Order-entry errors
- Search success and zero-result searches
- Usage of diagrams and technical documents
- Self-service order completion
- Customer-service demand
- Employee onboarding time
- Customer and employee feedback
Not every benefit will translate directly into fewer labor hours or more revenue. Some improvements may create operational capacity, reduce interruptions, or make information more dependable.
Be clear about the outcome being measured and avoid assuming that usage alone proves value. A document may receive many views because it is helpful—or because the related product information is confusing. Combine behavioral data with feedback from the people using the experience.
Build a Focused Business Case
Broad claims about operating with fewer employees or quickly recovering the cost of ecommerce are difficult to support. A more credible business case begins with one specific workflow.
For example, suppose sales and service employees collectively handle 500 routine replacement-part inquiries each month, and each one takes an average of eight minutes. That represents roughly 67 hours of employee time.
A digital tool will not eliminate every inquiry, but the team can estimate how many customers may use self-service, what it will cost to build and maintain the experience, and how the saved capacity could be used.
The business case should consider:
- The current volume of the task
- Employee time required
- Error and correction costs
- Customer impact
- Implementation cost
- Ongoing content and data maintenance
- Expected adoption
- Exceptions that will still need human support
- How the result will be measured
That creates a more realistic basis for deciding whether the investment is worthwhile.
A Practical Framework for Getting Started
1. Identify the workforce constraint
Look for work that repeatedly consumes employee time, slows customer service, or depends heavily on one person’s knowledge.
2. Choose a high-frequency workflow
Focus on a task with enough volume or impact to justify attention, such as replacement-part identification, repeat ordering, inventory lookup, or product-document requests.
3. Map the required knowledge and data
Identify the products, systems, business rules, documents, and people involved in completing the task.
4. Decide what should be self-service
Separate predictable steps from decisions that still require product expertise, judgment, or customer discussion.
5. Establish a baseline
Measure current volume, time, errors, service demand, or another relevant outcome before introducing the change.
6. Pilot a focused solution
Start with one product family, customer group, location, or internal team. This gives the organization a manageable way to test the workflow and identify missing information.
7. Measure and improve
Review adoption, accuracy, time saved, customer experience, and employee feedback. Use what the team learns to refine the experience before expanding it.
A Practical Place to Start
Ask your sales, service, and product teams which routine questions or transactions depend most heavily on a small number of experienced employees.
Choose one of those workflows and document:
- What the customer or employee is trying to accomplish
- Which information is required
- Where that information currently lives
- Who owns and maintains it
- Which steps could be completed through self-service
- Which decisions still require human expertise
- How the organization would measure improvement
Digital commerce is not a complete answer to manufacturing’s workforce challenges. It can be a useful part of the response when it preserves knowledge, reduces repetitive work, and helps employees focus their time where experience and relationships create the most value.
Looking for Ways to Reduce Repetitive Work or Make Product Knowledge Easier to Access?
We can help you identify the customer and employee workflows where digital tools may make the greatest difference.
Contact us to talk through your current processes and workforce constraints.
