In today’s world of online shopping and business, E-Commerce became the go-to platform to fulfill those needs. While the most common form of E-Commerce happens between a Business and a Customer, also known as B2C, B2B E-Commerce quickly grew to massive levels as numerous E-Marketplaces come up every day.
B2B E-Commerce is the buying and selling of goods or services, and the transaction of money between two companies or businesses.
2019 saw an increase of over 18.2% sales over 2018 through the B2B E-Commerce platform. In addition to this, the total sales for manufacturers and distributors increased by 1.5%.
Today, in 2020, B2B E-commerce projects twice market share than that of B2C E-commerce and is set to have the largest E-commerce growth during the 2020-2025 period.
That being said, given the complexity of B2B E-Commerce, it is hard to achieve certain B2B business objectives. That’s where a great B2B E-Commerce platform will simplify things for you.
Choosing the right B2B E-Commerce Platform is just as important as having one, in general. The platform you select should be cost-effective and help you scale and grow your business as your needs evolve.
A good platform should support your B2B business objectives over time as well as the ones you have right now. But which objectives are those exactly?
Let’s take a look at some of the B2B business objectives a good B2B E-Commerce platform should help you accomplish.
The top 5 important B2B business objectives are:
- Reduce Order management Costs & Repurpose Staff
- Eliminate Order Errors
- Increase Order Numbers
- Improve Customer Experience
- Differentiate and Personalize
B2B Business Objective #1: Reduce Order Management Costs & Repurpose Staff
Many businesses forget to consider just how many individuals have a hand in manual order placement and management. It’s also easy to forget how much is being spent on manual entries and fulfillment, too.
Some representatives have to enter the order; another who has to receive and process it; then a representative has to fulfill the order and get it ready for shipping; there’s a shipping rep, too; and finally, at least one finance or billing associate has to handle the billing and accounts receivable.
That’s at least five individual people and that’s being polite about the numbers. Realistically, you may have anywhere from five to twenty people performing these necessary responsibilities. That’s a lot of people, a lot of hands, and a lot of costs to be responsible for.
However, a good B2B E-Commerce platform can help you reduce these order management costs because it will streamline and automate the process that easily causes higher business expenses. With an automated system, there are fewer people involved at lesser costs.
B2B Business Objective #2: Eliminate Order Errors
Aside from higher costs, you always have to account for potential human error when orders are processed and fulfilled manually, too. Call centers and service reps are so often inundated with orders, payments, and record-keeping that it’s always possible that a mistake will be made along the way.
And those mistakes can be costly in more ways than financially.
- Rekeying Orders – Rekeying orders into multiple programs always increases the order error rate.
- Communication Gaps – An error is more likely to occur if the order is taken over the phone or through an email. Believe it or not, but a lack of customer visibility into order details can cause these errors to happen.
Account changes done over the phone may not be saved correctly or on time and may cause the item to be shipped to the wrong address or even person! - Inventory Invisibility – Field sales reps may unknowingly communicate outdated or completely sale when making a sale if product or inventory data isn’t available in real-time. This leads to dissatisfied customers and time lost on reorders.
- Product Data inconsistencies – Likewise, systems used to manage product data and info that are outdated will invariably lead to errors and inefficiencies.
- Manual Business Rules – Sometimes rules are made to be broken and then immediately fixed again. Without an automated system, rule-breaking will occur. Ensuring your programs are connected with a single source of data truth will eliminate these challenges for you.
Improving the ordering process will help eliminate errors and increase your revenue by decreasing your costs.
Thankfully, we live in the digital age and modern technology has evolved enough that a good B2B E-Commerce platform can help manage those orders and keep critical errors nominal.
B2B Business Objective #3: Increase Order Numbers
It’s always about the customer, or the customer is always right. Either way, the customer should always be at the center of your business strategy and making them happy and a repeat buyer should be the goal of a strong one.
It’s the only surefire way to ensure continued growth within your organization.
As with B2C buyers, B2B customers are exercising their mobile phones more than ever before. In fact, according to an article by Forrester®, over 68% of B2B customers prefer to research independently online.
Needless to say, if you want to meet your customers’ needs, you need to engage them where they are.
Today’s consumers want to complete most of their purchasing process before they even engage with a representative from your organization. So, without an automated B2B E-Commerce platform, this can’t be done.
B2B Business Objective #4: Improve Customer Experience
The higher-ups at your company love improvements in the process because it means a reduction in costs and an increase in your bottom line.
So, by moving your ordering needs online, you’ll be able to create many operational efficiencies across the entire business including reducing delivery times, providing automated order status updates, controlling catalog visibility, and set pricing tiers, giving sales reps ready access, and so much more.
Automation simply affords you the chance to eliminate the manual steps that are a necessary part of your sales process today and will help you reach your B2B E-Commerce objectives sooner rather than later.
B2B Business Objective #5: Differentiate and Personalize
Today’s B2B E-commerce market is doused with similar products and services. The only way to stand out from the rest is by building a B2B E-commerce website that provides them with the necessary information and research to buy a product.
In return, you will get valuable insights into data like their buying preferences. You may then use this data to improve your processes and identify key metrics. This helps in differentiating your customers and strategizing personalized marketing campaigns.
By now, you must be aware of the key B2B business objectives a B2B E-commerce platform needs to address and help you grow your business. In addition to fulfilling the above-mentioned objectives, the platform must also include these 7 key features to cater to B2B shoppers.
Ultimately, if your E-Commerce solution does not embrace these B2B business objectives, it’s time to rethink your approach to E-Commerce. That is where Sellers Commerce can provide a comprehensive solution.
We have integrated our E-Commerce platform with numerous ERP solutions, payment gateways, shipping carriers, social media, and email providers to bring to you an E-commerce platform that will check all the boxes. Schedule a demo to know more.