B2C – Selling to the consumers
Today the internet is full of businesses selling their products. The whole concept of consumer
targeted e-commerce started with shops selling computers and computer parts, simply because
the customers buying computers were confident and comfortable with the media. Soon to follow
were the businesses like Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc. selling Books and CDs to the masses,
simply because the product were confined, easy to understand and easy to ship.
Today the challenge is to keep the consumer entertained at your website, and inspire them
to buy your products, even create new needs and habits for the end user.
Many ideas has come to life in the attempts to do this, such as memberships / community features,
games and competitions, interactive animations and 3D viewing of the products, and latest;
integration to the online social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and others.
B2B – Trading with your Partners online
The challenge of trading with your business partners however, is a different ballgame all
together. On a higher level the partner business contracts and agreements negotiated on a
face to face (or by phone) level. After that the most challenging aspect is reflecting that
agreement in all its detail in the e-commerce application, including all discounts, product
availability, delivery agreements, insurance etc.
The application itself is no longer a platform for entertainment or sparkling animations,
but a tool for your customers to handle their business relationship with you. In a B2B e-commerce
application the most important factor would be the ability to expose the business functionality
agreed upon precise, consistent and with minimal latency, and doing so as simple as possible.
What are the benefits?
If your e-commerce application works well and is reliable, it empowers your customers. It
makes their day easier, and basically improves your overall business relationship. They will
therefore be more prone to buy more products from you.
For your business it simply means optimizing your sales procedures, maximizing the profit
and minimizing your cost. This is achieved by automating as much as possible over the entire
sales process, from maintaining your product data to receiving orders, and giving customer
service.
If your customers have easy access to your entire assortment of products and all information
and documentation about it, they are more comfortable buying from you. If they after a purchase
easily can follow the delivery, download their invoices and see if their payments have been
registered it makes your whole relationship complete, with a minimal effort.
Is my business ready to go online?
That depends on a few things. For obvious reasons your business must be must be using an
ERP system for managing all your customers, products, business agreements and inventory, the
more automation the better. If you negotiate the price on your products from sale to sale,
it is very hard to make a decent application respond to that.
Are your products suitable for online trading? If your products e.g. vary a lot in size,
quality or in other ways are subject for a batch-to-batch inspection and /or the price will
be completely dependent on personal evaluation and negotiation, it is challenging to implement
it in a systematic application, however not impossible.
Are my customers ready?
First you must determine if you have enough number of customers, and if so do they order
your products often enough for an e-commerce application to be feasible? If you are a production
company with just a few large customers that always order the same products or only use EDI
or similar, it might not pay off, however for e.g. a wholesale, distribution or other trading
company with a larger amount of reseller business as their customers, it makes perfect sense.
Are your customers online? If they are naturally close to a computer with internet, even
a Smartphone, on a daily basis, e-commerce is a definite possibility. If not, evaluate the
idea of getting them closer to the required technology. This could be helping them giving
orders electronically in another ways, consider e.g. mobile text messaging or similar could
be an alternative.
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