Here’s How Motion Industries Implemented a New AI Product Discovery Platform
A key theme running though this article series is the need for B2B organizations to consider the way they present themselves to their audience from the perspective of a B2C company and create similar experiences for their customers.
One of the biggest bugbears any ecommerce brand can come up against is when customers are unable to find the product they are after, and this rings just as true in the B2B world. In truth, it may be even more pronounced here as buyers are more likely to be seeking a particular product, rather than simply browsing as many B2C customers do.
“Customers have a lower tolerance than ever for not being able to find what they want, quickly and easily,” said Retail Solutions Managing Director for Google Cloud, Amy Eschliman. “In fact, search abandonment, when purchase intent is not converted due to poor product discovery experiences, costs retailers $300B annually in the US alone.”
This reality is what is leading many B2B businesses to invest in technology which improves the customer journey through their ecommerce platform and makes it easier to find the right product first time.
Motion Industries
As a top supplier of bearings, pneumatics, hydraulics, and mechanical power transmission products to American industry, Motion Industries knows first-hand how important it is to find the right part for the job. That is why it took the decision to implement new digital technology to supercharge its product discovery capabilities.
After careful consideration, Motion Industries chose a partnership between GroupBy and Google Cloud and their jointly developed ecommerce product discovery platform powered by Google Cloud Retail AI. As the first B2B customer to implement the platform, Motion Industries was relying on Google and GroupBy to power the search and recommendations experience for its business customers.
The platform encompasses search, recommendations, personalization, navigation, merchandising, data enrichment, SEO, CMS, and advanced data analytics, while simultaneously boosting user engagement across the board.
“GroupBy and Google Cloud are two industry pillars that can accelerate Motion’s plans and bring additional expertise and perspective to the platforms,” said Motion Industries VP for Corporate Accounts and Ecommerce, Kevin Stone. “Motion is committed to eCommerce excellence and providing a world-class experience to our digital customers. This partnership will result in improved digital experiences for Motion customers and supplier partners.”
With the implementation of the new product discovery platform, which provides the same high-quality search and recommendations results you’d expect from an industry leader such as Google. This will empower Motion Industries to get in front of the customer with unmatched results that will ultimately improve the customer experience across all digital channels.
Artificial Intelligence
A big part of the challenge when trying to improve product discovery capabilities comes from using technology to deduce user intent. For all its promise, AI is still very much in its nascent stage of evolution right now and we have a long way to go before we have true thinking machines of the kind featured in science fiction movies.
However, the AI being deployed by Google and GroupBy’s platform is some of the most sophisticated out there right now and leverages all the search engine expertise Google has been accumulating in its many years dominating that field.
Google is an industry leader in delivering personalized content across its flagship properties such as Google Search, Google Shopping and YouTube and the staggering amount of data which passes through those platforms is not only feeding back into them, but also working to improve product recommendations on any ecommerce portal using this technology.
“Being able to work within a platform that enables merchandisers to utilize sophisticated, trained, and optimized Google Cloud machine learning models to automatically align with business goals will be a game-changer for Motion, putting them at the forefront of the industry as the go-to destination for industrial supply,” said GroupBy CEO, Roland Gossage. “Ultimately, Motion will be able to better understand their customer’s needs and intent using trained machine learning algorithms further improving their customer experience by delivering fast and accurate search results and personalized recommendations.”
Final Thoughts
Making product recommendations and search capabilities more accurate and relevant than ever before is a core component of bringing B2B shopping experiences more in line with those in the B2C space. Artificial intelligence may have a long way to go, but with Google’s vast banks of data powering these innovations, Motion Industries can be safe in the knowledge it’s deploying the absolute best version of the technology available today.
Artificial intelligence is sure to be a hot topic at B2B Online Orlando 2022, taking place in November at the JW Marriott Orlando Bonnet Creek Resort & Spa, FL.
Download the agenda today for more information and insights.