You can start small and grow big by using an online B2B marketplace as a retailer. There are entrepreneurs that are doing pretty good by taking advantage of B2B marketplaces to reach customers all over the world. But it pays off to start and develop your own B2B platform, where you can offer both your products and goods from other retailers and manufacturers.
Turning a B2B marketplace into a business development tool is not that hard for companies that know how to use advanced technologies to their own advantage.
Using a B2B platform as a stepping-stone for business development enables you to reach new market segments and introduce new product offerings in the process.
You are also providing more value to the customers as online B2B marketplaces offer advanced functionalities such as product search and filtering, customized offers and personalized settings.
The B2B marketplace model allows you to expand your revenue channels and introduce new distribution channels to your clients.
Sure, you need to also deal with invoices, contracts between companies participating in your marketplace, and keep various business records with you, but you can deal with the challenges of paperwork by automating a good number of procedures.
Marketplace software is about the automation of processes and procedures and once you have a structured marketplace model working, you can move on to automate almost any procedure. Moreover, the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence tools will help you develop your business marketplace into a customer-centric one.
Once you have your B2B platform up and running, you are free to customize and control the entire customer journey within the marketplace.
This, in turn, gives you unparalleled understanding and insights on how your customers purchase and sell goods and services, what they are looking for and how as well as where bottlenecks appear during the process of buying and selling products.
You cannot get information about these processes and behavior if you are using external B2B marketplaces such as Amazon for example, but an internally developed one or a Saas (service as a software) marketplace solution will give you the whole picture. Furthermore, you can track individual customers and groups of customers, which enables you to introduce the right functionality and offer both services and products that are in demand by the companies on your marketplace.
B2B marketplaces offer advantages to both retailers and manufacturers:
These are the basic advantages of using a B2B platform of your own to develop your business.
Some company owners are afraid that managing a global B2B marketplace is too much of a challenge to deal with. Sure, there are challenging moments but overall you get the opportunity to develop new markets and customer segments and offer an enhanced service to both suppliers and purchasers. You can actually turn your B2B platform into the center of your business strategy and develop your entire business around this service.
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