How B2B Companies Leverage Technology To Accelerate Sales In B2B
A borderline between B2B eCommerce and B2C is blurring. 80% of B2B companies actually see how customer expectations have changed due to their impeccable B2C experiences. What does this mean for wholesalers? What kind of B2B technology business to business representatives are using to adapt to the needs of a modern client?
Shifting in B2B customer’s expectations
B2B wholesalers are searching for ways to optimize the business workflow for demanding сlients. Fairly enough, as B2B customer expects a personalized flexible experience that mirrors today’s high-end B2C services. The year 2020 technology embracing more and more efficient and savvy ways to construct an app that would do everything within a single space. Multi-tenancy architecture in B2B platforms is a big player on the arena now, as businesses are recognizing its value.
What is a B2B platform with a multi-tenant architecture?
Multitenancy is an approach for an efficient B2B Ecommerce Platform, which also deals with the challenge of managing omnichannel sales. It has two levels of data. The main core — which is common to every customer, and a set of functions & configurations that can both be shared and personalized. What else is inside its structure and how it could help run a successful sales in B2B?
B2B eCommerce platform, which covers the whole buyer’s journey is what would distinguish an average B2B experience and an exceptional one. By giving your potential B2B partners a safe space to perform all the necessary transactions and functions, like placing orders and getting quotations, customizing users and giving an ability to manage roles within a single environment, as well as content sourcing and variation, product data storage, and more, you’ll be the 1st one considered as the best partner and win more tenders this way. This a key part of a B2B company’s strategy, as the ability to purchase certain materials/services can determine the profitability of operations and their quantity.
What do actual B2B companies say about the value of an effective multi-channel sales management? Over 80% of B2B companies stated that an omnichannel strategy is important to their long-term success by driving more sales and profit.
Accenture held a survey, where it aimed at figuring out where B2B companies are rather planning to invest their resources. And a major part of respondents proved one more time: it is critical for a successful B2B company to leverage the proper Ecommerce Platform to go up with their profits.
What should be inside a B2B platform to make the work efficient?
Multiple User Roles
In 70% of cases, there are more than 2 people deciding upon purchase in a B2B sector. And it is 30% when it comes to 5+ decision-makers. Your ideal B2B platform should handle multiple roles, therefore. While one team member could have the right to create requests for buying the products, the other one could be able both to collect orders and approve the requests. There also could be budget limits, applied automatically to a user of a certain level. Improved B2B personalization is a key factor in choosing the supplier.
Easy Search within a Platform
76% of customers want an intuitive search. Make it easy for your B2B clients to find what they want. Functionality should be prioritized over design.
Multilingual Space
Seamless B2B Ecommerce Platform is a space for diverse business representatives. This implies having sales partners, whose language would vary depending on a region of doing business. Although English is widely accepted as lingua franca, chances that it will be alien to a non-native speaker are high. Successful B2B companies apply 7 languages on average. Dealing with cultural differences in an efficient manner would keep your partners satisfied and stress-free.
External Systems Integration
For 40% of B2B clients back-end integration with financing, order management systems (OMS), or enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are a key feature, which helps companies to easily win tenders. Gepard B2B Ecommerce Platform easily integrates with your ERP, CRM, WMS, RMA systems. Payment systems integration is there as well. Provide a choice. Connect various payment methods suitable to every diverse customer.
Product Content Delivery and Updates
We should also acknowledge the role of product content in this flow. Fast and safe space to share the digital information between all business parties is a necessity. And it’s easy to do so in integration with top-quality content providers (CSP), aggregating, enhancing, and creating product catalogs with product descriptions, images, videos, and other rich media content. Not always the product data works for all the parties: different requirements, necessary fields, and formats could become an issue while sharing data. Automated multi-tenant B2B software actually helps to cut the time, effort, and spendings on keeping the data clean and structured, which also fits the needs of every unique B2B client.
Product Catalog
An effective sales process in B2B demands detailed product descriptions and a comprehensive product catalog. You could have a look at a detailed guide on how to create sales-driven product descriptions to grow efficiency.
Pricing optimization
B2B Platform ecommerce parties should have a tech possibility to accustom prices depending on a user logging in. What’s more — think of bundle and product combinations special pricings.
Orders and Quotations
B2B wholesale includes operations as bulk ordering, reordering, tracking, an ability to retrieve latest orders information and manage personalized quotation-discounts.
Mobile Experience Optimization
Set an autocomplete function and a vivid CTA. People start a search with a smartphone. And a B2B is not an exception here, as it moves closer to absorbing the best B2C best practices.
Summary
B2B website personalization is a critical condition for businesses that want to compete in a global environment. The one close to B2C experience indeed. They must create impeccable online shopping experiences with the list of features we were talking about just recently. B2B integration with a number of clients is possible, and even effortless when done right. With proper B2B software covering all the necessary demands of potential B2B partners, it is so. With Gepard multi-tenant platform it doesn’t matter how many B2B customers you have and how diverse they are. Our highly customizable platform allows vendors to sustain complex B2B scenarios and provide a personalized buying experience for every customer. Using the single Core functionality your online stores are connected through the API + Event Bus, providing buyers with the solution tailored to their individual needs and expectations. Win tenders by leveraging the advanced multi-tenant ecommerce technology. Learn more about the solution.