Serving the thoroughbred horse industry from Lexington, Kentucky, Doc Lane’s Veterinary Pharmacy is using ecommerce to grow its business of providing medications to veterinarians and their racehorse-owning clients.
Since deploying a new ecommerce platform nearly a year ago, the company has increased total sales by 30%. The percentage of orders placed online has grown from zero to about 40%, says Ryan Nesbitt, co-founder and chief financial officer.
Doc Lane’s new ecommerce site runs on the BigCommerce B2B Edition ecommerce platform and features an upgraded buyer’s portal. It has made it easier for the pharmacy supplier to showcase its full range of products while also making it easier for buyers to find what they need, place orders and pay online, he says.
“Customers didn’t really know the full extent of Doc Lane’s capabilities,” Nesbitt says. “And that’s where digital commerce comes in.”
Doc Lane’s builds its brand and grows commerce online
On the ecommerce site, DocLanes.com/equine, customers can learn that the company provides both branded and “compounded medications.” The latter is a form of made-to-order medications that vets may not easily find elsewhere.
The site also provides a better overall customer experience. Nesbitt says it includes the ability to:
- More easily set up customer accounts
- Find and order specific products
- Place reorders
- View order history
Now, Doc Lane’s is also expecting a continued increase in the percentage of customer accounts paying their invoices online through the newly released BigCommerce B2B Edition Invoice Portal. The invoice portal is designed to let customers view their invoices online and click them to process payments. It also reconciles payments with enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs) and lets customers pay invoices for orders placed either online or offline.
In addition to simplifying the invoice-paying process for customers, Doc Lane’s also expects the invoice portal to improve its cash flow.
“Over 60% of Doc Lane’s Veterinary Pharmacy customers pay orders on terms,” Nesbitt says. “Many of our customers wait to send us a paper check after they receive their billing statement at the end of each month, which is like adding an additional 1-2 weeks to their 30-day terms.”
Lance Owide, B2B general manager at BigCommerce, describes the invoice portal’s abilities as “transforming a traditionally disconnected process into a seamless centralized hub where buyers can manage offline and online transactions from one ecommerce backend.”
Other companies using the BigCommerce B2B Edition include B2B brands The Beer Bat, Tectran, USCutter and United Aqua Group.
Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. [email protected].
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