Best 10 B2B eCommerce advantages
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The Benefits of B2B eCommerce
B2B eCommerce solutions can transform the way that companies do business.
As B2B sales is increasingly shifting from traditional outbound channels to inbound online platforms, businesses must respond in order to meet their customers’ expectations and remain competitive in the marketplace.
As well as allowing your customers to purchase your products online, B2B eCommerce solutions also offer numerous benefits for businesses, enabling them to increase sales, optimise efficiency and reach new customers and markets.
Here are the key benefits of dedicated and tailored B2B eCommerce software:
1. Tap into a huge and growing market
The B2B eCommerce market is huge. It’s twice as big as the B2C industry. In the US alone, it’s predicted to reach $1.8 trillion by 2023. Buyers now find the online sales experience more convenient than buying from a sales representative, as they would have done in the past.
This represents a significant opportunity for businesses.
2. Reach more buyers
The way buyers shop is changing. Buyers want to be able to research and buy online. In fact, according to the Merit B2B report, millennials are increasingly taking on decision-making roles within their organisations, and they expect to be able to buy online. This is part of the reason why B2B eCommerce is growing so quickly.
B2B eCommerce software is an incredibly effective way to reach new customers, strengthening your online presence and, as a result, helping potential new clients find you via search engines.
3. Reach new markets
As well as reaching more clients within your existing markets, B2B eCommerce solutions will allow you to reach new markets.
When you take your B2B sales channel online, your sales activity is no longer dictated by the availability of your sales team. Your online sales channels are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This makes it significantly easier for customers from different markets and time zones to buy your products.
4. Increase sales
B2B eCommerce software will not only allow you to reach out to a wider customer base and attract more buyers, it will also help maximise sales by implementing automated programmes to cross-sell and up-sell. A large wholesaler utilising our B2B eCommerce solution, for example, saw an average sales increase of 10.5 percent.
Programmes can be used to offer relevant suggestions, encourage customers to buy additional, related items, or upgrade their chosen products to ones with a higher spec. They also run personalised promotions, and feature price mapping so the right customers see the right prices as the right time.
5. Enhance efficiency
Your B2B eCommerce software can be integrated with your ERP in order to remove paper-based processes and reduce the time and resources required for administration. An integrated setup will enable your ERP to automatically detail sales statistics for your clients, including order totals, revenue, profit percentages and discounts.
In addition to this, you can also integrate with your customers’ procurement systems to win new business and improve customer retention.
And, because customers can order online, your customer service team can focus on core customer service functions, rather than taking orders.
6. Faster delivery
B2B eCommerce solutions not only make the sales process more efficient for the seller, but also speed up the process for buyers.
Rather than having to manually manage and track orders and inventory, a synchronised online system allows brands to sync data across all channels, automate fulfilment and inventory updates, and handle complex orders. This leads to fast, accurate and transparent delivery and ultimately, satisfied customers.
7. Reduce costs
A further benefit of B2B eCommerce software is the potential to minimise costs while boosting revenue.
By taking the majority of your business processes online, the software saves time and money on areas such as order entry, customer service and the provision of client information.
Automating and streamlining processes boosts efficiency and eliminates unnecessary costs.
8. Stay competitive
With B2B customers increasingly switching channels to buy online, if you don’t keep up and offer this service, you risk being left behind. As eCommerce sales become the norm, we will in turn see buyers stop calling, emailing and visiting – they will want to do everything online to improve efficiency and cut costs. If you don’t offer an effective B2B eCommerce facility, you risk losing your customer base and being left behind by your competitors.
9. Boost analytics
Data is a key part of B2B sales. eCommerce platforms allow businesses to acquire, analyse and measure core data far more easily, including customer engagement metrics, sales, product mix, inventory turns and more.
By integrating analytics with your ERP, you can obtain invaluable data and actionable insights that will take your customer understanding to a whole new level.
10. Scalability
With the help of an effective B2B eCommerce solution, your business will be able to grow and scale in response to market demand.
