If someone tells you that your current corporate website can be turned into a B2B portal, which will help you significantly improve your company’s productivity on the two main factors: Revenue Growth and Cost Savings, and that the portal can be launched. In a matter of months with a very reasonable investment, what will your reaction be? Read on to learn how companies around the world are missing an opportunity that may revolutionize the way they run their businesses.

What is a B2B portal?

A portal is defined as an access point to the World Wide Web. A portal is a combination of web pages, features, and services that become a primary destination for users. The word was first used to describe the sites of Internet service providers or popular search engines such as AOL, MSN, and Yahoo! At a later stage, the word “portal” evolved into something larger that encompasses business websites, where a corporate portal or business information portal acts as a basis for a company’s employees, customers, suppliers, and other associates to access. corporate information and web services. A B2B portal is a different type of website with functions for conducting electronic business and managing important parts of corporate business processes.

Benefits of having a B2B portal

Today, B2B portals are not just a fancy idea! They are an absolute must for all businesses of any type and size. The advantages of having a quality B2B portal are enormous. Implementing a true high-quality B2B portal could have an immediate impact on business productivity.

Revenue growth

Increased revenue from existing customers

Existing customers get faster and easier access to product information, a faster response to their requests, get better customer service, and can purchase products online.

Increased revenue from value-added services

Once a B2B portal is established as the primary sales channel, the available resources can be used to create more value-added services for customers. Some of the services that the portal can offer could also be used to generate more value.

Cost savings

Order processing cost

If the B2B portal integrates the supply chain management solution, it will dramatically reduce the cost of order processing. Studies show that a similar solution can reduce the cost of processing a purchase order from an average of US $ 70 to just US $ 6.

Sales and support costs

The automated sales and customer support functions built into the solution are capable of reducing overall costs by up to 30 percent.

Inventory maintenance costs

Clearer visibility and forecasting capabilities thanks to various features of the B2B portal can help companies significantly reduce inventory maintenance costs.

Other key benefits include:

Low cost of customer acquisition

An effective portal brand on the Internet will help attract customers from new sources. The cost of attracting customers through online channels is always cheaper than other traditional methods.

Improve customer service

The ability to have constant interaction with customers through the B2B portal helps companies to better serve customers. The B2B portal solution allows you to track the entire order process from payment to delivery and provides greater efficiency in customer service.

Reduce the supply time cycle

Customers can select products from the integrated marketplace of the B2B portal and submit purchase orders or purchase products directly using the shopping cart. Buyers manage all their procurement-related correspondence from one consolidated work page, helping them to react instantly and reduce document processing time.

Community participation

Business buyers and sellers can create communities around the B2B portal discussion forum. This helps you get valuable feedback in time, build new partnerships using a community’s networking capabilities, and easily disseminate important information to members.

Real-time access to current product information

Current product information is vital to making an accurate purchasing decision. By updating product content and other information using custom forms as needed, the company can help buyers and other associates make critical decisions quickly.

Control dishonest spending

The consolidated and automated procurement and approvals method stops nonconforming purchases at a company.

Main components of a B2B portal

Supply chain management

Supply chain management solutions can deliver great value to existing business systems. Implementing these solutions will help achieve an incredibly high return on investment and will have a tremendous impact on the business of the company, including: better productivity, faster order processing, increased visibility, elimination of non-conforming or unplanned purchases. , etc.

Market

This is the place where companies can post their products for sale. A sophisticated shopping cart will be integrated into the electronic marketplace to automate the purchase process.

Auction

The electronic auction system can use auction methods in both English and Dutch. For convenience, the auction component can be integrated into the electronic marketplace.

The online auction helps to liquidate surplus goods easily.

Reverse Auction

This solution enables the company to automate electronic procurement, where suppliers compete for business online in real time.

Showcase for participants

Each partner of the B2B portal will get a showcase that can reflect the profile of the company, its products, services or other information.

Forum

A forum or discussion board is an interactive message board organized online where participants conduct discussions on a set of topics by posting questions, comments, and responses.

Internal messaging system

The elaborate messaging system allows a participant of the B2B portal to send and receive messages from other participants and from the company. Since the messages do not leave a secure server, the participants would not worry about sending confidential information over the Internet.

Classified

The catalog-based bulletin board enables business associates to post important notices in various pre-defined formats.

Business Directory

This is a list of all registered partners of the B2B portal, either by business category or in alphabetical order. An advanced search engine tool is incorporated to find a business based on the data provided.

Electronic catalog

Electronic Catalog – A hierarchy of product and service categories based on UNSPCS, a global method of classifying products and services that covers the broadest collection of industries and commodities available today, and is designed to facilitate e-commerce transactions by providing a common naming system independent of geography. .

Product content addition system

The product addition mechanism based on an easy-to-use wizard or simple but detailed forms allows users to integrate products or services with accurate and up-to-date information.

Product notification

The system can generate an alert and send it by email to a user, who requested to report once a particular product or service is added to the electronic catalog.

Many other features could be incorporated into an existing B2B portal depending on the requirements, such as: News aggregation via RSS feed, Contact management, Electronic magazine, Press room, Document repository, etc.

Time required to configure

Using ready-to-use B2B portal components from a provider like Rusbiz.com, a mid-size portal can be built or integrated into an existing website in three to four months.

By developing a B2B portal ahead of your main competitors, you can give your business a significant boost and make your company stand out from the crowd.