Every year brings fresh technology onto the scene with the potential to revolutionize the way businesses operate. From the rise of automation to cloud computing, the business landscape looks vastly different to how it did only a decade ago.
If your business wants to stay at the cutting edge and keep up with the competition, then it’s critical to keep up with innovative technologies. The business-to-business (B2B) sphere is one area that stands to benefit from greater digitalization, which we can see from the increasing shift towards B2B marketplace platforms.
So, read on to take a look at just how this innovative technology can help to reshape the way your business approaches B2B e-commerce.
What is a B2B marketplace platform?
If you aren’t familiar, a B2B marketplace platform is a centralized digital space that allows companies to easily network and trade with each other. Rather than relying on outdated systems and individual lines of manual contact, organizations can take advantage of a global network of businesses that are already set up on the platform.
This takes a lot of the faff and potential holdups out of B2B dealings, with communication streamlined thanks to it all taking place on a single platform. Not only that, the innovative tools embedded within the marketplace platform can make all the difference to the way that you do business and collaborate with suppliers and potential partners.
Innovation through automation
Modern B2B marketplaces will generally offer options to incorporate automation into your processes. Your team can set up automatic processes to handle repetitive and time-consuming tasks from invoicing and contract validation to real-time price comparison. With the platform handling these tasks, staff can instead focus the bulk of their time on activities that enhance your business.
And automation doesn’t just save your business in the time department. With less direct manpower going into the busywork of your procurement and invoicing processes, the effective cost of each task lowers. Not only do you get more value out of your team’s time, but your business spends less to achieve the same degree of work.
Innovation through integration
In order for your business to be as effective and efficient as possible you need to ensure that all of your systems are working in tandem. Many businesses suffer from the fact that their data is siloed and the software they use does not automatically line up.
B2B marketplace platforms can seamlessly integrate with other key business systems, from enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to customer relationship management (CRM) platforms. This ensures that data is easily sharable between these systems, giving you and your team far more accurate oversight.
This level of integration also helps to cut out the issue of manual data entry, as staff no longer have to copy data by hand from one system to another. As data moves digitally through your integrated systems the risk of potential inputting errors falls, saving the business from the risk of potentially costly typos.
Innovation through accessibility
Before the advent of B2B marketplaces communication was largely relegated to disparate emails and phone calls, with which it was hard to keep track of exactly what was being said or agreed. When it came to invoicing there were plenty of businesses who still relied entirely on paper and postage.
Through a centralized e-commerce platform, you can do away with the inconvenience of paper invoices and easy-to-lose email chains. Digitalizing the entire procurement process and conducting it through the platform allows your business to streamline things and achieve far greater efficiency.
Having a greater degree of access to a wider pool of potential suppliers and other businesses offers the chance to expand your reach and deliver further growth. As some B2B e-commerce platforms also offer self-service options for businesses this cuts out a lot of the middle work so that you can get on with the more productive elements of building stronger B2B relationships.
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With the help of the innovative technologies embedded within B2B marketplace platforms, your business could reshape the way it handles e-commerce. How will you be using new tools to revolutionize your B2B processes?
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