Matan Holander, VP Business Development Business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce has evolved at multiple levels. Evidently, understanding the unique purchasing preferences of the modern day buyers have become increasingly critical to the long-term growth of B2B merchants. Today, B2B buyers are no longer willing to be caught up in cumbersome or circuitous purchasing processes that involve significant human interventions. Rather, they demand intuitive, mobile-first, self-service interfaces, and 24/7 e-commerce availability along with personalized catalogues and pricing and product selection specifically curated for their needs.
To begin with, it is imperative to understand how B2B e-Commerce differs from B2C e-Commerce significantly, in terms of personalization complexity, real-time, bi-directional ERP integration, and more. B2B e-Commerce solutions must offer customer-specific catalogues, pricing, promotions, approval workflows while facilitating access to sales orders, invoices, debts, and more via real-time integration. Unlike B2C, B2B sales orders are much more complex to build, often with hundreds of line items, which require productivity aids such as templates, favourite items, sales order drafts, and more. Also, field reps must have full visibility into the B2B e-Commerce channels and be fully aligned with the same to maximize multi-channel sales.
To help consumer goods manufacturers and wholesalers win big in the B2B e-commerce game by transforming their business’ digital future, Israel and NYC-based Mobisoft has introduced an ingenious B2B e-commerce solution. “With our platform—Mobisale—at the centre, we help manufacturers and wholesalers sell smarter, faster and in a more efficient, effective, and profitable way, by maximizing the value of every customer visit,” notes Matan Holander, VP, Business Development at Mobisoft.
Mobisoft’s Mobisale is an integrated B2B commerce solution focusing on sales and distribution of consumer goods. With its different modules, this cutting-edge mobile-first software encompasses all field sales and distribution activities like order taking, van sales, merchandising, proof of delivery and self-ordering e-commerce, allowing the field teams to communicate and collaborate in real time and customers communicate with their vendor by themselves.
In the world of B2B e-commerce where more than 80 percent online orders are placed from smartphones, Mobisale’s clean and sleek mobile user interface is the key point for winning this new world.
Mobisale’s intuitive user interface equips field sales teams with a complete 360-degree view of information on every customer, showing customer-specific catalogue, pricing and promotions, selling recommendations, and more, thereby assisting representatives to grow sales by collecting orders in a fast and smart way. The platform empowers van sellers to manage their stock, issue invoices and delivery notes, and collect payments in the field while enabling merchandisers to aggregate business information with dynamic questionnaires, planograms, share-of-shelf, and competition monitoring. With instant proof of delivery through the platform, suppliers can gain real-time control over distribution operations, saving time through a complete paperless distribution process. Added to that, Mobisale can be fully integrated with any ERP and clients’ IT systems. A step ahead of other competitors, Mobisale is highly configurable and can be tailored to a brand’s specific needs, be it different reports, product catalogues, pricing, approval workflows, or more.
As retail stores no longer need to wait for the sales rep’s visit or to call the brand/ wholesaler’s service centre to place complex B2B order, Holander points out that B2B e-Commerce is seen by many as the end of the traditional field sales rep channel. “However, the rep’s role is far from over. In fact, they can now invest their time on higher-value tasks such as strengthening customer relationships, growing the business, providing market education, and more while dealing with inventory checks, price and catalogue inquiries, and other activities through Mobisale, rather than just type an order” he mentions.
Mobisoft has assisted scores of renowned global brands like Unilever, General Mills, British American Tobacco, JTI and more to gain real-time control over their field operations with overall reduced operational costs. In an instance, one the world’s leading tyre manufacturer, Michelin approached Mobisoft to augment their adoption by tyre shops, which their competitors failed to do with other B2B e-commerce solutions. Enabling tyre shops to place orders from Michelin through its mobile app, Mobisoft increased the client’s adoption rate to 80 percent with a 15 percent increase in order value, all within three months.
After investing in its technology and the completeness of its solution, Mobisoft is now all geared to expand its international growth, through both direct and indirect sales (with its partners). “We will be adding new supported languages to the platform soon, while working on innovative ways for our clients to capture and receive orders,” affirms Holander.