When we talk about e-commerce, it’s not only B2C, but also the B2B industry that’s rapidly gaining momentum in the digital space today. Ease of use and quick, efficient, minimum-click processes are making the space attractive for many B2B businesses that provide greater convenience to the user’s buying experience.
According to “The Ultimate B2B E-commerce Guide: Tradition Is Out, Digital Is In”, released by DHL Express, 80% of the B2B trade interactions between suppliers and buyers will happen in the digital space by the year 2025. Keeping that in mind, let us look at how B2B e-commerce businesses can make profit using E-commerce technologies.
Emerging technologies in B2B e-commerce
Here are some of these upgrades to the B2B e-commerce industry that we can expect in the coming years:
- Upgrading digital infrastructure
Advancement in technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data analytics, machine learning, and business intelligence insights will help in boosting the digital framework of the B2B e-commerce. For instance, through these e-commerce fulfillment services, B2B businesses can monitor and improve their product’s performance. Additionally, it will help them increase the accuracy of their demand-supply chain.
- Giving more importance to B2B2C sales
According to DHL’s B2B E-commerce whitepaper, the emerging e-commerce technologies in the B2B businesses are already reducing the entry barrier for B2B companies to eliminate the sales person and sell directly to the consumer (B2B2C). This means, now B2B suppliers can directly sell their products to the end-consumers to maximise their profit and boost their business. For example, creating a customer-friendly website and interface will help customers navigate through the website easily and buy products, leading to a direct business-to-customer sale.
- Enhancing customer experience
For better customer experience, businesses must learn to integrate functionality with new technology, such as digitalization of the full product catalogue and inclusion of an easy-to-use and powerful search engine to look for products online. In addition to that, mobile responsiveness, secure online payments, strong data protection, and chat functionality have already become some of the key expectations for most of the e-commerce platform users.
- Online chat support
Many B2B e-commerce logistics platforms are integrating a live online chat support feature to help buyers with their queries. This is improving the conversion levels and boosting their buying choices.
- Personalization
Since buyers today prefer personalised solutions, many B2B companies are keeping a track of their buyers’ past purchase history and optimising the price through optimisation algorithms and configure price-quote (CPQ) software to identify the patterns of their buyers’ behaviour and customise their buying experiences. Further, introduction of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) will permit buyers to customise the presentation of their purchased products right from packaging, handling, and loading.
How is DHL boosting the business of B2B e-commerce?
DHL Express owns a huge fleet of aircrafts that can service the need for growing demands of buyers while also providing B2B businesses direct and quick door-to-door access to many overseas shipping markets. To facilitate this, at DHL, we have a team of experts who help in minimizing the chances of financial risks by making available easy Duty and Tax payment options as well as providing real-time tracking of purchased products. Our global logistics team spreading across 220 countries and territories will boost the businesses of these B2B companies by keeping customers satisfied with our speed, convenience and reliability.
These evolving technologies coupled with the support from DHL Express will surely boost the B2B businesses on their journey. The whitepaper released by DHL Express gives detailed insights about the B2B’s e-commerce revolution.