Most wholesale businesses are built on the B2B model, involving businesses of varied sizes and capitals in every transaction. While most of the sales originated from traditional channels so far, there has been a significant shift to the digital realm. In recent years, it has been observed that traditional commerce channels are more rigid and don’t offer the flexibility or agility necessary for growth and transformation. This is where the concept of online commerce comes into play, even for wholesale businesses that operate at a different level compared to retail companies.

eCommerce has a significant role to play in laying the cornerstone for B2B businesses, allowing them to enter multiple market areas simultaneously and keep up with the changing customer expectations. What’s more, online sales channels are more flexible and have room for scalability on the go, which indeed provides better growth opportunities to wholesale businesses. With this being said, we have crafted a detailed guide on the importance of online commerce for wholesale businesses having a B2B model. This way, you will be able to make a well-informed decision for your business and make it future-ready for the transformative digital realm.

Reasons For An Increasing Shift Towards B2B eCommerce 

There has been a significant paradigm shift in the B2B wholesale industry. Rather than relying on the age-old traditional practices, most businesses have already integrated online commerce with their existing sales channels. Now, there should be certain reasons or factors that added fuel to this shift and made it more than a necessity for businesses in this hyper-competitive market. Keeping this in mind, we have explained some of the reasons for which shifting towards B2B commerce can prove to be a boon for wholesale businesses.

Shift In Buyer Expectations

In recent times, there have been numerous changes in buyer expectations. Most clients dealing with wholesale distributors or sellers do not want to go through the hassles of ringing up the company, enquiring about the product levels, and then placing the order. Rather, they want a system where they can be at optimal controlling vantage points. Besides, most clients nowadays want flexibility in commerce operations, which further paved the way for the rise of B2B eCommerce.

Cost-effective Business Operations

One of the major reasons to shift towards B2B eCommerce is the access to cost-effective business operations. Wholesale businesses can make the most out of advanced management and planning software programs like ERP systems to integrate their processes and streamline their workflows. Since the commerce platform can be easily integrated with a wholesale ERP software, businesses can automate several processes, track inventory levels accurately, and determine variable pricing models. All in all, these changes can improve budgeting and draw in more revenue for the wholesale businesses in today’s hyper-competitive market scenario.

Increased Demand For Digitized Self-service Platforms

Most businesses dealing with wholesale manufacturers or distributors wish to access a system that depends on a self-service model. In other words, they prefer using a platform from where they can check the stock levels directly or place an order without involving the consultant team of the wholesale business. This is why B2B eCommerce has become so popular in recent times since there has been a sudden increase in the demand for digital self-service commerce channels.

Quick Adaptation To Market Trends & Disruptions

B2B eCommerce paves the way for quick adaptation of the business according to the market trends, which indeed will help a wholesale business to gain the necessary competitive advantage. For instance, wholesale businesses can integrate multiple payment gateways with the commerce platform to provide better options to their customers for making payments at their convenience. Apart from this, integrating B2B eCommerce can also make a business immune to sudden market disruptions since it opens up more sales channels.

Real-time Access To Significant Business & Customer Data

One of the major reasons to invest in B2B eCommerce is gaining real-time access to numerous datasets pertaining to the industry and the customers. For instance, wholesale companies can leverage ERP software to quickly access order details, past customer actions, market trends, and valuable industry insights. With proper data analytical tools, businesses will have an upper hand in making accurate decisions based on numbers and not just mere assumptions.

Higher Scalability & Flexibility

B2B eCommerce offers a greater level of flexibility and scalability to wholesale businesses in terms of transforming any existing workflow or integrating a new change for business growth. For instance, the eCommerce platform can be easily integrated with social media platforms to make the business more visible and draw in a higher degree of organic traffic. Similarly, it also paves the way for designing a variable pricing model where businesses can offer the best price rates for their products depending on market movements, customer expectations, loyalty programs, and many other relatable parameters.

Why Wholesale Businesses Should Opt For Digital Commerce Channels?

While B2B eCommerce has proven to be extremely beneficial for the wholesale industry, making a shift from conventional practices to the digital platform will require a few more convincing reasons. After all, adopting digital transformation and entering the online commerce industry will bring a major change in business operations and the underlying work model. That's why we have briefly explained some of the benefits digitalization will bring to your wholesale business in today’s era.

Streamlined Inventory & Supply Chain Management

Making your wholesale business digital will require the integration of appropriate technologies, out of which the ERP software will play a significant role. It will help you streamline the inventory operations by providing a real-time view of the stock levels across multiple warehouses. This way, you will have better control over the supply chain by ordering stock replenishment at the correct time and preventing events like understocking and overstocking. Additionally, it will also help in improving product traceability, which is a process by which you can improve the transparency of the product’s information, right from its origin to the warehousing step.

Enhanced Customer Experience

Making your wholesale business go digital will also help you offer an omnichannel customer experience across all platforms in no time. you can leverage different software applications to track a customer’s buying journey and provide accurate guidance. Additionally, you can also integrate chatbots to automate customer support workflows and increase the interaction levels for better engagement. Online commerce will open a host of new opportunities to attract more customers by integrating multiple sales channels on a centralized platform, like the eCommerce storefront, social media profiles, and many more.

Broader Market Reach

If you want to venture into new market sectors, digitalization will pave the way for your wholesale business in this hyper-competitive market. For instance, you can integrate your business’s social media profiles to access a greater audience section with ease. similarly, the online commerce platform will help increase your market outreach and provide you access to more customers without geographical restrictions. In other words, you can start expanding your business to regions that would otherwise not be possible using traditional offline commerce practices.

Operational Efficiency & Cost-effectiveness

No doubt going digital will bring a significant change in your budgeting and revenue planning for the wholesale business. You can leverage wholesale ERP software to implement a variable pricing model, which will further help you to provide accurate product prices based on customer loyalty, special discounts, market pricing actions, and several other such parameters. Besides, with process automation, you can significantly reduce dependency on humans and save a lot by minimizing errors and risks.

Real-time Data & Analytics

Also, digital commerce will provide you with real-time datasets about your customers, market conditions, and the industry sector. Hence, you will be able to make accurate decisions and well-informed calls based on the analytical results, whether it’s implementing new revenue channels or targeting a new section of the audience. Data analytical tools will give you valuable insights that can help you understand your customer expectations and accordingly scale the existing strategies or implement new acquisition plans.

Best B2B eCommerce strategies for your wholesale business growth

If you are planning to integrate B2B eCommerce with your wholesale business, you will need a few proven strategies to ensure it’s a fail-safe and risk-proof decision. Since the upfront investment in digital commerce will be significantly high, it’s better to ensure the strategies implemented already have generated results in the market. With this being said, we have briefly explained a few ways in which you can enhance your business performance with wholesale B2B eCommerce.

Faster Load Times

From using Content Delivery Network to optimizing caching memory, you need to ensure the commerce platform has a faster loading time, somewhere between 0 to 2 seconds. It will reduce the bounce rate and ensure the visitors spend significant time on the commerce platform without leaving in between the marketing funnel.

Personalization

Since most clients nowadays want a digitized self-service platform, it’s better to offer personalized services so that you can keep them engaged for longer times. For instance, including product filters, personalized recommendations, and a dedicated support assistant will help you deliver an omnichannel user experience across all digital platforms for your wholesale business.

CRO

One of the major strategies you can implement to enhance your B2B eCommerce deliverables is by focusing on CRO or Conversion Rate Optimization. From including high-grade product photographs to making the commerce platform mobile-friendly, there are several ways in which you can convince visitors to spend significant time on your business website and reach the end of the sales funnel.

Versatile Payment Options

Integrating more than two payment options with the commerce platform will give your wholesale business a better opportunity to increase the user engagement rate. Nowadays, most customers expect to have multiple payment channels for eCommerce platforms, from traditional debit and credit cards to advanced online wallets.

Virtual & Augmented Reality

Another strategy you can implement to upscale your wholesale business’s performance and deliver outstanding user experience is by integrating virtual and augmented reality. For instance, including a feature where customers can try products virtually before placing the order will increase user engagement by significant levels.

Challenges Of Going Digital & The Best Ways To Overcome Them

While integrating B2B eCommerce with the wholesale business sounds to be tempting, there are a few challenges that need to be addressed at the earliest. Below we have described the major challenges that if not solved can cause significant business disruptions.

Integration With Legacy Systems

If the new commerce platform needs to be integrated with a legacy system, there can be issues with compatibility, system performance, and data accessibility. Hence, the best way to tackle this issue will be by migrating the legacy system to the new platform and ensuring a frictionless data uploading workflow.

Data Security & Privacy

Since B2B eCommerce relies mostly on data, the lack of security and privacy protocols can pose a major threat to your wholesale digital business. So, you need to implement role-based access control for the backend database server, along with other encryption protocols and password management systems.

Conclusion

B2B eCommerce has paved the way for digital transformation for most wholesale businesses. However, steering around the challenges and implementing the technologies might create disruptions in the regular business flow. That’s why you need to find common ground through strategic planning, data-backed decisions, and user training and support. Only then you will be able to harness the true potential of B2B eCommerce for your wholesale business.