The B2B eCommerce revolution is underway!

Over the past several years, the B2B e-commerce market has become significantly more digital, reaching $21 trillion today according to the United Nations.  

While this shift is not new, with giants like Alibaba and Amazon already generating $11 billion and $4 billion in revenue respectively from their B2B platforms in 2017, Covid accelerated the transformation. 

The pandemic showed that not everything could continue to rely on face-to-face interactions alone (from the impossibility of receiving faxes while working remotely to sales teams operating from a distance rather than in the field...) and that digital experiences could improve customer experience while saving time and boosting productivity through the automation of a number of processes. 

And this trend is only gaining momentum, with projected growth of +19% (CAGR – 2021/2028)! Digital now addresses many of the challenges and needs of B2B businesses:

     -   The need to centralize information – The multiplication of sales channels, which            leads to information loss

      -   The need to create a true customer experience – New customer expectations, with            buyers now expecting an experience similar to B2C.

      -   The need for a digital sales channel – A criterion now included in tenders            across more and more sectors and industries

But today, despite a changing environment, e-commerce sales still account for a small share of total B2B sales: 14% in the United States, 19% in France, to name just a few. In fact, in 2018, only 24% of B2B leaders truly understood why and how their industry was being disrupted by digital and therefore integrated it into their strategy. Even though the pandemic has changed the situation, many B2B players still haven’t made the digital shift.

But why? 

Setting up this new channel seems too complicated, too time-consuming, too expensive....

When thinking about an e-commerce project, a B2B CEO faces the following challenges: 

1. Cannibalizing the sales team

Sales teams often see the launch of an e-commerce site as a competing channel. Failing to get the sales team on board with online sales can be a real blocker.

2. A difficult ROI to prove

For many B2B players, e-commerce is a completely different model, and its benefits are hard to estimate.  

3. Technical and IT complexity

Information systems, when they exist, can be highly specific to the industry or business model and are often poorly suited to the digital e-commerce systems that dominate the market.

4. The need for internal reorganization

This type of project requires dedicated staff, or even a business unit of its own, to meet the operational and development needs of the e-commerce platform.

But this view is based on outdated technical solutions that have not evolved with B2B expectations. 

Today, building your B2B platform quickly and without spending millions in year one is possible! 

1/ E-commerce is more than a new channel — it’s your sales team’s best ally

E-commerce doesn’t just create new sales opportunities; it also helps you:

• Use your resources more efficiently by grouping recurring online orders and letting sales reps focus on new account acquisition
• Improve efficiency by centralizing all your company’s interactions on a single platform
• Test new products for sale at lower distribution cost
• Capture and centralize data through a multichannel approach to increase your margins (better control over purchasing, deeper customer insight, and therefore more sales)

2/ Effective upfront scoping for a project that fits your budget and your needs

Having a clear idea of your ROI is possible with the right scoping! 

Project scoping brings together internal information (business workshops with your different business units, technical workshops with your IT team...) as well as external insights (benchmarking competitors’ solutions, customer expectations...) and helps answer several questions: 

• What do I need, and by when, to best meet the needs of the market and my customers?
• What business opportunities can I seize, and on what timeline?
• What do I need, and by when, to best meet the needs of the market and my customers?
• What business opportunities can I seize, and on what timeline? 

Don’t forget that you can always phase the development of your e-commerce platform. Thanks to the SaaS model, start with the simple things and expand functional coverage through a scalable, modular approach. Build an effective long-term solution from the outset, even if the scope is limited at first (technical, product, or geographic), and evolve it by adding modules (payments, promotions, marketing...) whether they are already included in the chosen solution or provided externally. 

3/ A new type of technical solution for a controlled, successful project

Today, thanks to the new SaaS (Software as a Service) approach, an e-commerce project can be launched quickly, with controlled costs and without tying up a large share of internal resources: 

• A monthly subscription that scales with your business performance 
• A ready-to-go, scalable solution where infrastructure management and feature development are outsourced
• An open, modular solution that can connect to any type of system already in place in the company today and in the future. 
  

Building your e-commerce platform has never been so interesting — and yet so simple and so fast! Become the next success story in your industry!

Sources : 

1. UNCTAD - Estimates of global e-commerce 2019 and preliminary assessment of covid-19 impact on online retail 2020
2. BigCommerce - 7 B2B Ecommerce Trends You Need to Follow for 2022 and Beyond 
3. Statista -  E-commerce share of total B2B sales in the United States from 2019 to 2023 
4. FEVAD – Key e-commerce figures 2020
5. McKinsey - Digital Sales & Analytics: Driving above-market growth in B2B - 2018