B2B eCommerce: How It Can Maximize the Efficiency of Your Business by Saving You Time and Money

Although B2B companies have generally been slower to embrace the dynamic world of eCommerce than those in the B2C sector, eCommerce is now a crucial component of any successful B2B business strategy.

Selling online through an eCommerce portal is widely accepted as an effective way of boosting revenue, driving customer acquisitions, and differentiating your B2B business from the competition.

But eCommerce is also an easy and effective way of improving daily workflow efficiency and streamlining your business because it allows you to automate key business processes, reduce manual administration tasks, and scale your business for growth.

6 ways B2B eCommerce can streamline your business and make your daily workflow more efficient

1. Quicker and easier customer interactions

Communication is integral to every customer experience—even online—and when you communicate well with customers, your chances of success in business increase exponentially. The right B2B eCommerce platform provides many ways of helping you build stronger customer relationships by quickly, easily, and effectively managing how you interact with them about orders, shipping, product availability, promotions, company news, and more. For instance, you can exchange order-related messages with customers, connect with your email marketing solution, update customers on order status and shipping costs, and create your own personalized email templates.

2. Better sales rep engagement

A B2B eCommerce platform is a highly effective tool that helps your sales reps do their job faster, serve customer accounts better, and close more deals because it lets them do the work! With an eCommerce portal, your sales reps can take orders directly from your customers and then input them into your store. They can also add and edit customers and generate sales reports, making the entire customer account management and order management process seamless and efficient. And they can do all of this on any device (e.g., desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones), 24/7.

3. More efficient order management

B2B order management is the process of tracking your customers’ orders and then managing the necessary fulfillment processes for those orders. B2B online orders tend to be more complex than the average B2C order, so having the right B2B eCommerce platform in place can dramatically improve the operational efficiency of your business by relieving you of much of the manual administrative work. With an eCommerce portal, you can view customer order details, send and receive customer messages about orders, send automatic order status notifications to customers, create printable PDF pick lists, and more.

4. Faster invoicing

When you sell online through a B2B eCommerce portal, the entire invoicing management process is automated, making it super easy and saving you a great deal of time. Your online storefront can accept online or offline payments, seamlessly integrate with a variety of third-party payment solutions (such as PayPal, Stripe, Square, and Authorize.net), and also integrate with popular accounting systems such as QuickBooks Online and Xero for quick, hassle-free invoicing done automatically, 24/7.

5. Simplified account management and inventory management

Traditionally, you could spend hours upon hours managing your customer accounts and keeping track of inventory, but not with eCommerce! With an eCommerce portal, customer management is a breeze. You can add and edit customers, send email invitations to new customers, view detailed reports for each customer, and assign customers to specific price lists. On the inventory management side, a B2B eCommerce portal allows you to quickly and effortlessly import products and add product descriptions and images, add supporting documents like product manuals and certificates, create customized price lists, and set minimum order quantities if you wish.

6. Easier evaluation of sales effectiveness

Compiling and running reports is a necessary evil with any business, but it is often the task that is procrastinated the most. Apart from the many benefits a B2B eCommerce platform provides to help streamline your business that we’ve already discussed, making the process of report management quick and hassle-free is yet another. With an eCommerce portal, you can easily track your monthly sales, view customer sales reports, review sales rep performance as well as specific product sales performance, and even create custom reports—all with just a few clicks and keystrokes!

Ready to maximize the efficiency of your team, your customers, and your business?

B2B eCommerce doesn’t just provide a quick and easy way of allowing your customers to purchase your products online 24/7. It also provides a wide range of other capabiltities to your company that can simplify time-consuming daily business processes, including order management, customer management, inventory management, sales management, and invoicing. And when you are able to reduce the time you spend taking orders, communicating with customers, monitoring inventory, and processing invoices, you can focus on what really matters—expanding your business for growth!