B2B eCommerce presents a huge opportunity for the food and beverage sector, considering the growing digital maturity of the whole sector. Successful B2B businesses understand the importance of digital readiness and use digital tools to help them streamline their operations and meet fast-changing consumption and purchasing patterns.
Despite being slower to adopt ecommerce than B2C businesses, B2B brands are increasingly looking to digital means to boost sales a move driven by the success of early adopters and the changing B2B buyer demographic.
Understanding the unique requirements of the industry, Igor Nikolenko, Co-founder & CEO, SupplyMe, an online B2B marketplace that connects local food suppliers with restaurants, hotels, cafes, supermarkets, and other foodservice businesses of all sizes, lists down the top benefits that suppliers get when they start interacting online with other B2B players in the food industry.
New Integrated Sales Channel
Traditionally, B2B suppliers sell their products in a more classical/offline way. But since the pandemic hit the market, digital transformation for this sector accelerated at triple pace. Online channel presents an opportunity for B2B players now to acquire new customers, and a marketplace platform is a great place for that. Such a platform helps connect all players in F&B market enabling options for suppliers to list their products effectively while restaurants or other players can purchase items now easier than ever before. With more B2B buyers going online to research and buy products, suppliers must be where their clients are.
Smart Account Management and Full Transparency
One of the considerable benefits of an online marketplace for the F&B industry is the ease of access to all sales related activities. Businesses can manage their accounts through the platform at a more strategic level. It is easier to plan the stock based on demand, facilitate returns, obtain copy invoices and live statements of accounts through the platform.
Promotions
Exclusivity deals are extremely common in the food and beverage sector. While listing promotions are a key driver for increasing B2B sales and attracting customers in the food and beverage industry, they can be an extremely complex task to manage, particularly in food and beverage wholesale sphere. SupplyMe platform, for example, provides the flexibility to run promotions against pricing, choice of reward items, must buy items, free POS material and more. It also makes it easy to keep track of promotions and offers detailed insights and analysis into the success of the promotional activity.
Flexible Pricing Models
Setting up a price in B2B e-commerce can get quite complex. Prices may depend on the purchasing volume, pre-negotiated discounts, frequency of purchasing, and many other factors such as the type of business. These complex scenarios call for the ability to create and customize multiple price list for each customer, company, or business unit willing to deal with your business. B2B marketplace platform enables businesses to use flexible pricing models, giving them an element of control over the transactions made through the platform.
Personalization
86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience and personalization forms a huge part of delivering the best customer experience. 52% of customers are extremely likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t personalize their communication. B2B e-commerce platforms allows businesses to leverage data and analytics to segment audiences and deliver the right messages at the right time. Data is accumulated to gather insights into customers buying pattens, help them penetrate into new markets, improve conversions. Delivering the right message directly to their screen helps organizations to increase their average order value and drive brand loyalty.
Secure Payments
67% of the buyer’s journey is now completed digitally. Online payments have proven to be one of the most convenient ways to pay for goods and services. But still, the safety of sensitive data is a top concern nowadays, especially when it comes to financial operations. B2B online marketplaces offer a secured platform to manage transactions and payments easily with reduced paperwork and thus establishing better business relationships and less confusion all round.