Business-to-business buyers aren’t just thinking about cost. They have customer-experience expectations and shipping requirements to consider. They value personalized experiences, clear communication and reliability, just like their business-to-consumer counterparts.
With the value of B2B e-commerce sales outpacing the B2C market, e-commerce companies and brands with online retail segments can’t afford to overlook this reality.
Like B2C shoppers, B2B buyers will quickly switch brands if they find a better buying experience elsewhere.
The revenue potential for B2B e-commerce platforms that understand this dynamic and respond appropriately is enormous. It has increased every year since 2019, and will eclipse $1.7 trillion by 2028.
In response, B2B companies are investing in digital commerce to adapt to changing channels and customer expectations. This involves offering precise delivery information early in the shopping process, which enhances transparency for customers but adds complexity for brands.
Following are three best practices for addressing both issues compromise.
Understand your supply chain complexity. When B2B buyers turn to e-commerce platforms to fulfill their order, they have a simple expectation: get their order at the right time and at the right place.
For sellers, the reality is more complicated.
Setting delivery expectations is especially challenging when multiple nodes are involved, there are assembly or service requirements, or manufacturing lead-time components are part of the promising function.
What’s more, every brand’s supply chain is different, and even small changes to technologies and workflows can introduce unexpected complexities that erode potential benefits.
A one-size-fits-all solution will inevitably introduce new complications, inefficiencies and challenges. And the legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) system in place wasn’t built to handle scaled promising up in the shopping funnel.
For example, manufacturers need real-time inventory tracking to manage supply chain disruptions and ensure accurate lead times in production schedules. Industrial suppliers, by contrast, must maintain accurate stock levels and quick fulfillment to meet their clients’ demands and minimize downtime.
Understanding your business case and priorities will enable you to tailor your system to meet specific operational needs.
Integrate and activate real-time data. Accurate shipping promises aren’t just about inventory availability and transit time. Tracking the capacity of other components like manufacturing, warehouse operations, transportation and receiving can be equally important in a B2B digital commerce experience.
A set of composable inventory, promising and capacity microservices allows B2B digital commerce teams to solve these problems. They can be integrated with existing transportation management systems, ERP, and warehouse management systems, along with other enterprise applications that might keep track of capacity, inventory or transit data.
Composable microservices can include:
- Inventory single source of truth (SSOT): Establish a centralized supply and demand service for accurate inventory data across all sales touch points.
- Available to promise (ATP): Implement an availability microservice based on supply, demand, rules, segmentation and safety stock.
- Audit services: Invest in comprehensive services to identify and resolve discrepancies with inventory data.
- Flexible rules: Add capacity types that can be calculated or manually set.
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning integration: Enhance services for real-time decision-making and customer support, such as predictive promising based on historical shipment performance.
Continually assess and improve. When digital commerce platforms employ composable microservices to elevate supply chain visibility, they can expect to increase sales, reduce inventory and encounter fewer inventory cancels.
To be sure, composable microservices are not an end in themselves. Digital commerce platforms must remain agile and adaptable, evaluating outcomes and adapting their technologies, workflows and processes to continuously improve supply chains without compromising customer experience.
Consider measuring and evaluating:
- Conversion rate against promise data,
- Inventory turnover ratio,
- Capacity utilization,
- Order cancellation rate due to stock issues, and
- Customer satisfaction scores.
B2B e-commerce platforms face unique and ever-changing challenges in meeting buyer expectations while managing complex supply chains. To meet the multifaceted demands of B2B buyers, embrace composable microservices, draw on real-time data, and continuously refine supply chain processes.
Companies that prioritize these best practices will be well-positioned to capture market share and foster lasting customer relationships.
Devadas Pattathil is co-founder and head of product at Nextuple.