While e-commerce is associated with business-to-customer companies, it has also become an important trend for business-to-business firms. But it can be a challenge to implement. Here is how you can use outsourcing to get a strong start for your startup company’s B2B efforts.
The Challenges Of B2B Ecommerce
To better understand how outsourcing can help B2B e-commerce, you need to know how the latter works first. Much like its B2C counterpart, the goal of B2B e-commerce is to expand customer reach and make the whole purchase process more cost-effective. As such, much much of the transactions are done digitally.
However, trying to get a company to enter a business deal with you is different from convincing an individual customer to buy goods. This creates some unique challenges for B2B eCommerce.
A Complex Sales Cycle
Compared to B2C, where you deal with only one person, B2B eCommerce involves having to go through several decision-makers. This already makes the purchase process complex since you have to go through all these people. Additionally, there are various policies in place for these procurement processes.
Multiple Fulfillment Areas
Owing to the fact that client businesses have to serve customers across different locations, they might need different fulfillment areas for their orders. A B2B company must be able to serve these areas effectively. That requires a large amount of logistics on their part.
Providing different Modes Of Payment
Another major need of client businesses is different means of payment. Note that the scale of the transaction again creates a challenge here. B2B companies need to be able to manage multiple large payment requests effectively.
Maintenance Of Customer Relationships
Unlike individual customers, B2B firms need to exert a lot of effort in maintaining relationships with client companies. Here, you need to be able to deliver the right strategy to re-engage an inactive account. This re-engagement might require you to expend additional resources.
How Outsourcing Helps You Get A Strong Start In B2B Outsourcing
These challenges can stall your startup company’s foray into B2B eCommerce. But outsourcing can provide you with extra support to overcome these challenges. Here are some of the key benefits that you would want to take advantage of.
Expert Teams
Since this is your first time delving into B2B e-commerce, you might not have a dedicated team for it yet. Through outsourcing, you can have quick access to that. These expert teams can even identify gaps in your e-commerce strategy and help you find the best solution for it.
More Efficient Use Of Resources
With the larger orders that B2B companies need to fulfill, managing resources is a lot more challenging. With the expertise brought about by the outsourced team, they can help you better allocate these to meet orders. This can increase your savings greatly while getting greater returns.
Consistent Innovation For A Strong Start
To strengthen your B2B e-commerce efforts, you need to update your processes continuously. An outsourced team can help here by overseeing those updates. They also provide greater efficiency in implementing these. That lets you focus on the other aspects of your business.
Getting A Strong Start In B2B Ecommerce Outsourcing
As is with B2C, you should have a clear idea of how you would want to proceed with B2B ecommerce outsourcing. The first thing you need to do here is decide which parts of your operations you want to send out.
Some of the common tasks that you would want to outsource include:
- Product Sourcing
- Management of product inventories
- Product listing optimization
- Order management
- Bookkeeping
To determine which of these tasks to send out, review your current business processes. Feedback from your clients will help you determine which areas you are lagging in. From there, you can decide what type of outsourcing would be for the task.
Choosing Your Ecommerce Outsourcing Partner
When deciding on an e-commerce outsourcing partner, you would want to get one that has a good clientele reach. Note that this doesn’t always mean that they have big names under their belt. But you would want someone that has experience with handling companies like yours. Look into their client portfolios and see if they have ones that match your company profile.
It is also essential that the outsourcing partner has agile capabilities. Market trends can change rather quickly and they need to respond in the right manner. Look into both the talent they have and their technological capabilities for handling these changes.
Lastly, consider the offerings that they have. Aside from the general services that you will need,check any specialized services that might come in handy later. This will help you establish a long-term plan with the potential partner.
Bringing Everyone Together For A Strong Start
Once you have an outsourcing partner, discuss with them the overall strategy they plan to implement. Some of the essential things that you want to make clear include:
- The kind of functionality that you want to have for B2B clients
- Your desired cultural fit.
- The company’s creative design skills
- Additional support and maintenance for the service they provide
By having these outlined early, you can get a picture of how the work is done and whether the partner can fully cover the scope. From there, you can make adjustments to your work processes to better accommodate them.
Proper Management
One thing that your startup company might want to think about is how much control you relinquish. After all, these are major client dealings your outsourced partner will be handling. For that, you need to provide a clear set of regulations the outsourced team will follow.
Image from CIO.
However, you would also want to give the team some leeway to accomplish the different tasks as they deem fit. Here, you will need to trust their expertise. But you still need to have a monitoring process in place to see if they are meeting targets. Discuss with the outsourced team how to make this process more integrated into their workflow.
Give Your B2B Ecommerce A Strong Start With Outsourcing
When done right, outsourcing can give your B2B efforts a strong start. But don’t rest yet, as there will still be a lot of work ahead. And you would want to have the right team to help you. Connect with us today and we will be ready to push your business further.