The Benefits of B2B eCommerce

While the traditional image of a B2B purchase might involve calling a representative and placing an order — or worse, sending in a form — modern solutions look a lot different. B2B buyers are consumers, too, and they know how easy it is to research and buy products online and re-order and track their purchases. In fact, two-thirds of them look for digital or remote in-person engagement when given the choice.

From the seller’s point of view, digital transformation delivers powerful benefits for efficiency, accuracy, reach, and many other areas of business. eCommerce in the B2B space can vastly change your approach to sales.

As B2B sales are increasingly moving from conventional outbound channels to inbound online platforms, businesses need to respond to meet their customers’ expectations and remain competitive in the marketplace. Most use B2B eCommerce software to meet this demand. As well as allowing your customers to purchase your products online, B2B eCommerce solutions offer many benefits for businesses and can help you optimize efficiency, increase sales, and reach new customers and markets.

B2B eCommerce Benefits

B2B eCommerce solutions can transform the way that companies do business. They affect reach, profitability, flexibility, fulfillment, competitiveness, and much more. 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. Globally, it’s expected to reach more than $18 billion by 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 14.1%. Buyers now find the online sales experience more convenient than buying from a sales representative, as they would have done in the past.

In a 2021 report, almost 90% of B2B buyers said they would pay more for a supplier with an excellent eCommerce portal. Another nine in 10 said they would go to a competitor if their supplier couldn’t meet their needs through their digital channels. 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. It allows them to look into the product on their own time, access more in-depth resources, and easily collaborate with stakeholders. Plus, they can shop from anywhere, at any time, from any device. 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. Off-the-cuff sales are easier when you can provide a link to your product instead of asking someone to make a phone call.

3. Reach New Markets

Along with reaching more clients in your existing markets, B2B eCommerce solutions help you 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. Expanding into these markets is easier, too, thanks to the scalability and flexibility of B2B software.

4. Increase Sales

B2B eCommerce software allows you to reach out to a wider customer base and appeal to more buyers, but it also helps maximize sales by using automated programs to up-sell and cross-sell. A large wholesaler utilizing our B2B eCommerce solution, for example, saw an average sales increase of 10.5 percent. For the average B2B company, eCommerce drives more than 18% of all revenue, which is about the same as in-person sales and ahead of other channels.

You can use your software to offer relevant suggestions, upgrade their chosen products to ones with higher specifications, or encourage customers to buy additional, related items. They also run personalized promotions and feature price mapping so the right customers see the right prices at the right time.

5. Enhance Efficiency

Your B2B eCommerce software can be integrated with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) software 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 revenue, order totals, discounts, and profit percentages.

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. Speed Up 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 synchronized online system allows brands to sync data across all channels, automate fulfillment and inventory updates, and handle complex orders. Purchases can be fulfilled right away, and customers can track their orders for complete visibility.

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 minimize costs and boost revenue. By moving the majority of your business processes online, your software saves time and money on areas such as order entry, providing client information, and customer service. 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.

McKinsey research tells us that 65% of B2B companies are offering eCommerce. For the first time, businesses are more likely to offer eCommerce channels than in-person sales. It’s popular enough that you’ll need it to stay competitive, but there are also plenty of opportunities to get out ahead. If you’re offering eCommerce buying options and your rivals are stuck on the phone, there’s a good chance you’ll be more profitable and appeal to more customers.

9. Boost Analytics

Data is a key part of B2B sales. eCommerce platforms allow organizations to acquire, measure, and analyze core data far more easily. Those metrics might include customer engagement metrics, product mix, sales, inventory turns, and more. These metrics can be difficult and time-consuming to track through manual data handling routes. Automated solutions allow you to compile this information for faster, deeper insights that support continuous improvement.

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. Phone-based sales, for example, require staff members. If you grow your business or enter a busy season, you need to scale up your staff to meet demand. It requires costly and time-consuming salaries, training, benefits, and management. Software takes care of itself and can easily adjust and scale to evolving eCommerce needs.

Another aspect of scalability includes your partners. eCommerce sellers typically work with a wide range of partners to deliver their products, like warehouses, third-party logistics providers, marketplaces, and software services. If adding a new partner comes with months of IT development and modifications to your workflow, it can significantly slow down your progress and prevent you from adapting to the needs of your audience and industry. Effective B2B eCommerce software can simplify this process so it’s easy to work with new partners and integrations.

Talk to an eCommerce Expert

TrueCommerce is an intuitive B2B eCommerce platform that was designed to meet the complexities and unique needs of B2B eCommerce. With a wide range of tools for electronic data interchange, automation, and validation, we can help you enter the B2B eCommerce market with confidence and efficiency. Our end-to-end cloud-based software comes with unparalleled support so that you can master eCommerce without an expert IT team.

To find out how we are helping clients such as Safety Step and zMAX embrace the benefits of B2B eCommerce, please get in touch.