Owing to technological changes, b2b e-commerce platforms have grown exponentially, which has led to the growth of multiple wholesale b2b trade portal. However, international b2b trade portals are not without their set of challenges.
As more businesses are trying to get on the different wholesale b2b trade portal, new challenges come to surface. To stay in business and be the part of the growth that in store for the b2b companies, addressing a few of these is crucial.
In the recent future, the challenges listed below are likely to block the road:
Bulk pricing:
Most b2b companies place their base pricing on the volume. This poses a challenge to the processing units. One way to resolve this is by an effective content management software in place that can permit some form of a discount on volumes.
The discount can only be permissible to those companies that order a specific amount. Additional features like an automatic discount can also be looked into.
Payment processing:
Indeed payments play a major role in a business operation. However, it must be in accordance with international legal and financial rules.
As known, compared to the b2c marketplace, the purchase rate and frequency of b2b market places are quite high. This is a major challenge since international b2b trade portals will have to incorporate features like different payment variation per country, and pricing variation based on the number of items.
Even after adding such features, there is a long gap between purchase and payment. Additionally, invoicing is yet another issue in a wholesale b2b trade portal.
Skill requirement:
Every wholesale b2b trade portal is developing daily to incorporate the required product knowledge and expertise. In a b2b operation, buyers require a specific range of products along with a detail description of the same.
This requirement of buyers coupled with the growth and popularity of international b2b trade portals led to a huge volume of online searches pertaining to online marketing, and data analysis.
Vast service range for different brands:
A wholesale b2b trade portal does not deal with products or services for a single brand, and that is where the challenge creeps in.
When there are similar products and services from different brands, the overhead costs of managing the wholesale b2b trade portal increase. However, this problem can be addressed by setting up micro-sites for each band that the b2b platform is dealing with.
This arrangement makes managing different brands easier to some extent.
Bringing change:
While international b2b trade portals are working their way up to popularity, senior management still needs convincing. Additionally, the added value of a wholesale b2b trade portal needs highlighting.
However, changing any strategic unit will directly affect the stakeholders to a great extent which poses another strong challenge to the growth of international b2b trade portals.
Maintaining congenial customer relationship:
A good customer relationship is important both for the success of a b2b and a b2c business. Thus integration of an effective CRM software is essential since it can help in the easy management of the customer database. The information can be further used for marketing purposes. B2b customers have more chances of converting and repeating than b2c customers.
Thus keeping them satisfied is always a challenge for a wholesale b2b trade portal.
Becoming one of the biggest international b2b trade portals is not difficult, however, it won’t happen in a day. It’s important to address these challenges on the way rather than focusing on developing the inventory options.
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