What should be able to personal account of the wholesale company in 2013?

Introduction

The growth in the number of online stores is no surprise. 2013 will not be an exception. More than one thousand online shopping projects will appear. At the moment, few people are talking about a huge problem - a small number of suppliers who are ready to work “on order”. Small online stores can not afford to purchase goods at the warehouse, so they need the opportunity immediately after receipt of the order from the customer to reserve goods from the supplier, the next day to take it and carry it to the customer. But for any wholesale supplier, this means getting a huge operating load. In order to effectively sell goods to online stores, wholesalers introduce B2B systems.

Definitions

There is no exact definition of a product that solves the task of automating work with orders synchronized with an ERP system (for example, 1C). B2B - system, system of Internet distribution, system of online distribution, wholesale online store - these are the definitions of the same product. It allows a wholesale company to create a personal account for clients on its website, in which there is all the necessary functionality so that clients can no longer communicate with operational managers, and solve them independently, conveniently and quickly. In this case, there is a constant data exchange between the ERP provider and personal account.

Why the functionality of a B2B system in 2013 should be different from the functionality that was in B2B systems before?

<img src = " habrastorage.org/getpro/habr/post_images/ea1/7e5/ecd/ea17e5ecdf39d7dc85d0c7fefc01b667.jpg " alt = "The functionality of a B2B system in 2013 should be different from the functionality that was in B2B systems before" " >
In 2012, the number of medium and small online stores increased. Back in early 2012, most large wholesale companies did not even look at online stores as their customers. Now the situation has changed a lot, and in 2013 it will change even more noticeably. Previously, the B2B system had to take into account only the needs of offline - the wholesale company's customers, and in 2013 it was necessary to take into account the interests of a huge audience of online stores.
')
What is the difference between a regular wholesale client and a small online store?
It's simple:
- An ordinary client takes a batch of goods from the warehouse and pays for it (on various payment terms).
- a small online store has a supplier’s product on the storefront of his shop, receives an order from a customer, immediately reserves the product with the supplier several times a day. At the end of the day, he writes out one collective order for himself and arrives after him, for example, the next day in the morning, and delivers goods to customers.

From the principle of operation it is clear that an offline seller in a B2B system needs a catalog of products with current prices and current balances and, in principle, everything. But the online store needs much more functionality (more on that below). Based on the number of requests from online stores, it is not profitable for suppliers to supply this channel without a B2B system.

Work with leftovers

One of the main functions of any Internet distribution system is to display the current stock balance to customers of a wholesale company. Some of the suppliers show the number, someone shows just “many-few”. This is a familiar product catalog, the key feature is the current information on the availability of goods.
An invisible feature of the catalog is that, depending on the type of client, it can show different prices and even different groups of goods. Thus, the supplier disclaims the task of sending price lists to its customers.

Working with the catalog is the prerogative of those markets where the visual component of the product is of great importance. Clothing, shoes, toys, jewelry and so on ...
In the case when the product has characteristics that do not require a visual assessment, for example, plastic utensils, pharmaceuticals, spare parts, tools, and so on, the customers will work differently. Either the order will be imported from Excel, or a contextual search will be used.

Work with orders

A huge number of routine operations occur at the stage of work with orders. One of the main reasons for introducing B2B is to reduce the number of operations that sales managers do.

Operations:

1. Coordination of availability of goods and prices
2. Creating orders
3. Specify the method of shipment (Pickup from a specific warehouse or shipping address)
4. Specify legal. the person from which the payment will occur.
5. Specify the type of contract, which will be shipped
6. Add a comment to the order.
The functionality that online stores require to work with a supplier and is not strongly required for offline partners:
7. Quick reservation of goods immediately after creating an order.
8. Ability to download content (images and descriptions)
9. Information on balances should be as up-to-date as possible. Ideally, it is updated from the online ERP provider system. If just 2-3 minutes, too bad.
10. Email or sms notification of changes in order status.
11. Import of goods
12. If the product does not need a visual assessment, then a contextual search by product is necessary. It is convenient when the search shows the remains:

Finance

The least used functionality of the online distribution system also helps to save the wholesale company from routine operations, for example, from requests for reconciliation reports. In a B2B system, a client can form an act for himself on any date range on his own. Additionally, the client will be able to see the history of financial interaction with this supplier.

PS
Despite the thousands of online stores that are being created every year, most of them close in 2-4 months of work. In our opinion, the main reason for this is the excessive expectations of the creators of sites to obtain a relatively high income with minimal costs. The reappraisal by many start-up entrepreneurs of the value of various methods of “promotion” of an online store also negatively affects the implementation of projects. Many believe that if they know how to promote a site, then they will be able to easily sell goods, as they will attract more traffic to the site. It is not that simple. For example, the choice of a supplier is one of the most important tasks of a novice entrepreneur. If the supplier does not have an Internet distribution system , then it will be extremely difficult to work with him. We hope that in the new year the number of suppliers who understand the requirements of online stores will become much larger and the growth of the e-commerce market in Russia will beat another record.
Owners of small online stores will also benefit from our articles:
What you need to pay attention when opening a small online store;
The main mistakes when opening a small online store