With the on-set of the Corona virus epidemic, more and more buyers are using online methods to shop. As a result, retailers are doubling down on their eCommerce channels, leading to exponential growth in online ordering. This surge in demand has caused supply chains to be disrupted, causing the role of Wholesale Distributors, Brokers and Enterprise Brand companies that sell direct to Retail to never have been more important than they are today in replenishing that demand effectively and efficiently. That’s a tall order to fill for a Wholesale Distributor that sells a large variation of products through a mix of in-person, online and manual methods, while attempting to personalize the experience for each Retail buyer through targeted products, pricing and promotions!
The challenge for these Wholesale Distributors and suppliers then becomes how to manage and sustain their business on a regular basis without a complete field sales mobile ordering app and B2B eCommerce web store. Specifically, these Wholesalers need the ability to bring their sales and ordering processes online via a B2B eCommerce web store while making ordering digitally available on an easy-to-use field sales mobile ordering app.
B2B ordering apps cost a lot so invest your time and money wisely
As a Wholesale Distributor, Broker or Enterprise Brand company selling direct to Retailers, you should live with the peace of mind that your B2B platform of choice has the ease-of-use, feature flexibility and scalability you need to help you grow your business and manage it. Anything less will risk disappointing your sales reps and buyers with a product that is too cumbersome to learn, too difficult to use and too simplistic for the complexities of automating your business. That’s not a chance you want to take, especially when you’re investing thousands of dollars and your precious time trying to implement such a solution!
Beware, there are a lot of B2B ordering platforms out there you can choose from. It’s a tough choice to make, but be sure to consider the following key features and options that will allow you to fully scale your business with the one you choose:
- A buyer mobile ordering app available in both online and off-line modes
- Workflows for re-ordering, draft orders and historic orders
- Easy-to-use and intuitive interface for non-techie sales reps and buyers to find products and create orders
- Customer-specific catalogs and customer-specific product pricing
- Advanced features such as email PDF invoices, eSignatures, barcode scanning and more
- Full, reliable integration of your accounts, products, prices, inventory, orders, returns and more with your back-end accounting system
- Review, modification and confirmation of orders
A dedicated B2B eCommerce Web Store will scale with your business
Furthermore, what is often overlooked is the fact that many B2B eCommerce web stores were originally designed for B2C eCommerce web stores where slight modifications and simple enhancements were made to retrofit them for your complex B2B business. And as your business grows and scales, you will find these solutions to be quite outdated and ill-fit for your organization. For example, B2C eCommerce ordering platforms are often designed to allow any and all customers to access them, whereas a B2B Wholesale eCommerce platform requires a Retailer to have login access that is vetted and permitted by the Wholesaler directly. There are many other examples like these so remember, invest in a Wholesale mobile ordering app and B2B eCommerce web store that is ground-up developed for B2B Wholesale specifically and its complex needs.
Ensure your B2B ordering solution offers native mobile app options for the sales rep and buyer
If you’ve hired sales reps or are planning to, ensure your B2B ordering platform can allow you to take orders on the fly through a native iOS and Android mobile app at the least. This will ensure your sales reps are equipped with a mobile ordering app on-the-fly that they can use to up-sell and cross-sell whenever they want. This not only increases the potential for sales, but ensures your sales reps are always knowledgeable of new products, prices, promotions and accounts. Empower them with an app and you will see great results for your business!
Some B2B and Wholesale ordering platforms will take short-cuts and offer their ordering capabilities through a browser only. Be sure not to take this route as the experience is often nowhere close to the intuitiveness of a native B2B ordering app. Plus, you don’t get features such as working in off-line mode; the browser version requires internet connection at all times and lacks native mobile intuitiveness.
Also, be aware that some B2B ordering platforms don’t offer a native app for your Retail buyers. Studies suggest that when buyers have access to your custom catalog at the tip of their fingers they make smarter and more efficient buying choices from you which ultimately increases your sales revenues. And during times like COVID-19, buyer apps are more in demand than ever before! So look out for this when making your choice of B2B Wholesale ordering platform.
To Summarize
Make the right decisions when choosing a B2B Wholesale ordering platform. Anything less than perfect will have downstream and long-term negative impacts to your business and bottom-line that’s just not worth all the hassle.
Remember your choice of B2B Wholesale ordering platform should provide you with a B2B focused eCommerce site to allow your vetted customers to access your personalized wholesale products, catalogs and prices anytime anywhere. Finally, your B2B ordering platform should allow your sales reps to access your catalog, cross-sell, up-sell, take orders, add accounts and more in an intuitive, fast and easy-to-use native mobile interface that allows your reps to adopt the selling experience immediately in order to focus on serving your customers as best as they can.
Finally, your B2B Wholesale ordering platform should seamlessly connect with your back-end accounting system, updating accounts and invoices hassle free. This will allow you to focus on running your Wholesale business operations and fulfilling orders as soon as they come in, knowing all updates to your accounting system are happening in real-time.
Order Taker is a complete field sales mobile ordering app and B2B eCommerce web store, born out of the complexities of the Wholesale Distribution business and was built to help businesses like yours manage and scale the sales process to help you simplify your operations, grow your revenues and succeed. The Order Taker field sales mobile ordering app consists of a secure B2B eCommerce site branded to your specific business, a native mobile ordering app for your sales reps and buyers to take orders and a back-end administrative console for you to manage your data in Order Taker and configure its advanced plethora of options for customization.
Learn more about Order Taker by requesting a demo today and see what we can do to transform your B2B Wholesale ordering.