B2B ecommerce is the fastest growing ecommerce sector in the world.
In the USA B2B ecommerce sales account for up to 55% of total transactions in most B2B businesses. ( 2018 forrester report )
In Ireland B2B ecommerce accounts for 7% of total transactions.
There is a huge potential for growth in this sector.
Most companies come to b2b ecommerce as a reaction to a new site developed by their main competitor.
When you implement b2b ecommerce your customers now can order from you 24/7/365.
What is B2B Ecommerce?
It is the selling of product and services to other businesses online. Typically there are 1000’s of unique product identifiers ( SKU’s ) added with complex pricing arrangements for different customers. The setup has to be complex to suit your existing customers.
What an B2B Ecommerce platform should have.
Not all ecommerce platforms are suitable for B2B ecommerce. For an ecommerce platform to work for b2b it must have the following features.
- Customer Group Features
- Customer group pricing. This is where you have agreed a price for a product with a single customer or for a group of customers. Depending ont he volume and the customers credit worthiness will determine the price you are willing to discount to. You can have a customer group of 1 if you wish.
- Customer group payment terms. Some of your customers may have different payment terms. You may have customers you extend credit to and others that you want to pay via credit card up front. Not all your customers will be on the same payment terms. Because they start out on the same terms does not meant they will end off on the same terms.
- Show prices only to logged in customers. The general public will see the product and not the prices.
- Linking with your accounts/ ERP system
- Give your customers a view of their account online
- Let your customers print off invoices and statements
- Allow your customers to create shopping lists for quick re-ordering
- Show realtime ( almost ) stock levels to customers.
- Run multiple discounts and Buy One get One free offers.
- Offer reward points to purchasors so as to keep them loyal on the site.
-
- Ability to list millions of seperate SKU’s
- Ability to load up millions of SKU’s via product feeds
- Ability to load up millions of images and associate these with product skus via batch jobs.Mass update of products
- Order update
- Allow your sales people in the field to enter in sales on the fly, these sales go for dispatch immediately saving hours and errors in transcription of orders
- Shorten Dispatch times by 24 hours
- Link to logistics and update tracking codes and delivery status’s automatically.
Most ecommerce platforms will not have these features as standard and they will require plugins. However the core product needs to have some basic b2b elements in it to start with.
b2b Ecommerce Opensource Platforms.
We link B2B Ecommerce to the following platforms for seamless integration with Accounts, logistics and stock control.
- Link SAP Business One
- Tasbooks
- Epicor
- CORE
- Sage 200
- Sage 50
- and many more smaller systems.
Conclusion :
B2B ecommerce is for businesses not selling to the public. It allows you to take orders 24/7. It shortens dispatch times. It reduces the accounts departments time servicing account enquiries. It shows your stock availability in almost real time. Offering loyalty points in b2b ecommerce is the best way to convert your existing phone in orders to online ordering.
Read our review of the B2B Ecommerce Expo in Chicago.
We are specialists in B2B ecommerce.
Call us today for a free consultation. +3531524210.