The advantages of developing a B2B portal for the supplier.

12-11-18

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In the previous article we talked about the main functions and opportunities for the client, working in the B2B portal. Now we will show what advantages the customer himself will receive by working in it.

By implementing such a tool as B2B portal at the enterprise, the customer closes many questions and tasks that have to be solved daily at work. One of the main advantages that the supplier company will be able to immediately feel on itself is the significant reduction in the load on the sales department itself. Especially for those enterprises in which there is a large flow of applications (orders) per day, the company is growing, and the staff of managers is not planning to expand. This is due to the fact that part of the business processes related to sales is transferred to the B2B portal, the customer allows this tool to do at least part of the work that the daily manager does manually. And in this way, the company solves the problem not only with the load on the staff, but also reduces the time for processing the order at times.

The following example is those companies that may not experience a large flow of orders per day, but they want to grow and, experiencing, let's say, a direct dependence on specific employees, cannot do this. We are talking about those companies where managers can work for many years, maybe even 10-15 and possessing great knowledge in their field, work only with the pool of clients that they managed to attract in due time and this is enough for them. The position of such employees is usually that they work very hard every day, they are busy all day and they can’t do something more to increase this number of clients “and they don’t have time to do that.” This situation clearly falls into that category of companies when “we cannot force and would not like to dismiss”. Not to get into conflict with such employees of the B2B portal is doing an excellent job with it. As a result, employees have less workload and more free time, which can be spent on more productive activities. For example, to devote more time to processing accounts receivable by calling customers, or to put new ones in the fields in search of new ones.

Also, thanks to the B2B portal, you can solve the issue with the level of quality of customer service. Mainly in the field of b2b, the company's customers are already experts in their field and already know what they are buying, what the product looks like, and they don’t need advice especially, they would quickly make a purchase and forget about it. And in the life of the supplier company can occur when a new employee is hired, the training and adaptation of which will take a fair amount of time. So in such cases it is better to put such an employee to process already completed orders from the portal, where only a minimal part of the sales process remains. By the way, it even solves the issue with old employees, often there is a situation when, along with the manager’s departure, his clients leave him with whom he had been working for so long and they got used to him. In order to protect themselves for the future, it is better for clients to provide such a service working remotely from a manager so that contact with him is minimal. So managers can change, and customers will always remain.

Under any circumstances, introducing a B2B portal, you do not only do well for your customers, but also significantly benefit yourself. We have already seen that after only a month maybe two, the staff significantly increases their free time, which you can redirect anywhere. In our practice, there was a case where the customer still could not send the staff for advanced training, because the market needed specialists with a narrow profile of specialization, and such qualifications would be a great competitive advantage in the hands of the supplier company. And yet again, it was rested on the fact that the staff was immersed in work: phone calls, clarification of stock balance, duplication of orders in 1C from (mail, notepad, icq, skype, viber, telegram, etc.), informing clients on other issues, billing, and sometimes with this, so in general almost a chocolate bar you need to bring where necessary. Imagine how much, all this takes time. Need to use time more efficiently. Scan orders provide better portal. In any case, it is much better to spend time, the right is yours. It may be all the same, advanced training courses, the study of the range, and not only know the running positions, it is possible to study competitors deeper than you did before, new markets about which you have not even thought about, well, or finally looking for new ones customers go to the fields. We specifically listed what can take the staff, because we know that, as a rule, managers, before the introduction of such a system, create fear that they can be fired.

Today, there is an increasing trend and it is very pleasant, as customers gradually transfer employees to work in the portal itself and perform their main functions already in it, and not in the accounting system. In the B2B portal you can do both sales and purchases. We explain. Take, for example, sales, the site provides for an administrator’s office, which is granted all rights. New users can be tied to the account, for example, managers and give them limited rights, where they can “fall through” from any site to any client assigned to him and place an order on his behalf. Of course, there will always be that small percentage of clients who are used to working in the old manner (telephone, e-mail, etc.) from year to year and inviting them to work via the Internet will be stressful for them. A small digression - after all, not everyone still uses ATMs, top-up terminals, applications, and still go the old-fashioned way to get services at the bank’s cash desk, such customers will always be there. So, in a telephone mode, the manager being in the client’s office is at least more convenient to place an order from the site than to create it in 1C or at a maximum faster. Because from the site the order will still be placed in the accounting system. Another example is when the admin receives notifications about abandoned baskets by the client, in such cases the manager conducts a conversation with him in a telephone mode, may have forgotten or something else and warming the contact, pushes him to buy where he can do it instead. As practice has shown, this method works and increases sales. Another situation may be when the supplier's company "lay down" 1C and usually the work is suspended. So no, although orders will not be able to take place, but the manager may “fail” in the client’s office, in his basket and write down the order, because the prices and balances remain as they were at the time of the shutdown of the accounting system.

As for purchases, it is more interesting here. Through such a tool as an API, you can connect affiliate warehouses (warehouses of manufacturers or other suppliers) and display for the client, with the price recalculated for him, much more than is currently in stock. So, in the system, you can add the user name of the purchasing manager. After that, this account, through API means, is integrated with the personal account on the manufacturer’s website (supplier), the manager receives the issue on prices, goods and quantity in his B2B portal in his personal office and can make an order which is immediately issued by the manufacturer (supplier). The question is asked, why such an exotic, if all the same can be done on the website of your supplier? It is good if it is one, and if there are 5-10, and sometimes more, it will be much more convenient to work from one office, having access to all its suppliers, than to log in on each site. Sometimes all the same can be done by working from 1C, but for this you need to have special treatment so that you can make purchases without leaving your 1C working with your balances.

From this we can draw a small conclusion that it is not necessary to have an employee in the staff who owns knowledge in 1C, and this often happens, especially when he was a user of configuration 7.7 and then suddenly faced with 8.3 or vice versa. So, in order not to waste time on adaptation, and there are such opportunities to do your work through the site.

Go ahead. On the side of the admin panel to which the administrator of the portal certainly has access, there is a tab called “Commodity Activity”. What she says that you can observe in real-time what users (clients) are most often interested in, such as watching or putting it in a basket, but then for some reason have not bought it. The data are displayed in tabular form: customer name, date / time of viewing or adding to the cart, item, brand, name, etc. and then the data is exported, for example, in the xlsx format for further development (analysis) by the marketing department. After all, you can always find an approach to the client, when you know a little more.

In the end, I would like to add that after the development of the B2B portal, of course, there are more, but the most important thing is saving time on the processes associated with sales and using it more productively than it is now.