Order processing is a seemingly simple, standard business practice that wholesalers, distributors, manufacturers, and importers deal with every single day. If you’re using QuickBooks, you’ve likely learned where the issues in your process are, and you’ve also probably realized that QuickBooks alone isn’t the solution to those issues.
Many established B2B businesses are stuck in a rut. They’ve offered the same things, in the same ways, for years—sometimes decades—and they don’t see why they should change.
When someone at the office, a colleague in the same industry, or even a competitor discusses incorporating B2B eCommerce into their current business model, your management team scoffs.
B2B eCommerce is no longer “cutting edge” or “the latest craze.” For manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, and importers who haven’t jumped to digital, going digital isn’t a luxury or an optional necessity. This is something your customers have come to expect.
Any good B2B eCommerce strategy is built on a solid foundation, but that foundation will crumble if it doesn’t consider customers' needs.
Your customers, whether you’re aware of it or not, are only interested in a handful of things:
It’s one thing to attract new business to your website, but it’s another to retain that new business. All customers want a streamlined, easy ordering process, but customers in the B2B segment are often relatively neglected compared to those in B2C.
QuickBooks is a powerful software, but, like all software, it has limits. This is nothing against QuickBooks — far from it. QuickBooks does what it does very well, it’s designed to take care of very specific tasks, and it doesn’t make the mistake that many pieces of software have made over the years by trying to be something it’s not.
Order management software (for B2B eCommerce companies especially) isn’t just something that sounds nice, something that could be a good idea to look into five years down the road, something that you talk about around the office from time to time, something where you say, “Hey, you know, maybe we should get that someday.”
If your wholesale business utilizes sales reps to make sales, you have a model of business that other wholesalers don’t have to contend with. However, there are additional steps, considerations, and processes you need to manage and keep on top of in order to do business.
Better ordering processing improves everyone’s lives. Streamlined, effective order processing makes everyone happy, from the people in your office to your warehouse to your customers.
Distributors, manufacturers, and wholesalers rely on B2B orders from loyal customers. What Customers Want in a B2B Order Site – is the question businesses should ask. In order to retain repeat customers and gain new customers, innovative solutions have to be attained and implemented. Now Commerce helps businesses stay ahead of advancing technology by offering a cloud-based add-on for QuickBooks.
