Creating An Unrivaled B2B E-commerce Experience

B2B and B2C aren’t that different at the end of the day! Both are driven by human-based decisions that either make or break a deal. An obvious old chestnut? Yes, indeed. However, most B2B vendors seem to be oblivious of the fact that the majority of the purchasing decisions of a particular business are made by human beings themselves. While a few B2B services tend to provide personalized services, that are similar to the ones found on the e-commerce websites, dedicated to consumers, the majority of them fail to do so. Most importantly, businesses tend to oversee the fact that B2B customers, who make the decisions, are equal consumers of Amazon, Flipkart, Alibaba, and many other B2C e-commerce sites. Naturally, such experiences do tend to mold their experiences for online transactions at work. However, in reality, very few companies are able to meet the expectations of the B2B consumers due to its complex nature of transactions. And those who do, are able to keep a strong relationship with their customers as a result of which, are able to dominate the sales growth rapidly.

Perks of using Billing and Invoicing system similar to e-commerce giants:

As the consumer demands evolve over time and advancement in technology create new possibilities for most businesses, companies should aim to establish their e-commerce services on a firm footing. Major e-commerce giants such as Amazon have an easy and quick online transaction system that facilitates not only ease of use but also bring in better customer experience. Some of the advantages of e-commerce Billing and Invoicing systems are:

1. A self-service portal for the customers to easily facilitate their purchase demands, and manage the necessities without relying on the company directly
2. Easy Refunds and Replacements in case of faulty products or products that are no longer needed
3. Multiple payment options for the ease of customers
4. Easy to raise grievances system for faster dispute resolutions
5. Provisions for Bulk Payments

A world-class invoicing system: The Essentials

In the B2B space, as new forms of digital customer engagement are taking over by storm, adopting different methods for an efficient invoicing system helps leverage a part of the overall omnichannel commerce experience, which adds up to better customer experience. The following are the necessary features required for a world-class invoicing system:

1. Process all types of payments seamlessly: For a seamless mode of payment, there can be two types of scenarios. In the first scenario, customers can directly call the merchants, by calling their A/R representatives, who then collect the amount from the customer and make the payment on their behalf on the portal. Once the payment is added on the portal, it gets updated overnight with the help of a cash application, and a payment receipt is duly mailed to the customer. With the help of automation, the credit card details are stored for future use securely, and payments are done automatically.


In the second scenario, with the help of a self-service portal, customers can directly login using saved credit cards and can make payments, print/save the receipt, which is updated automatically overnight by the cash application. This has a tremendous impact as there is minimal analyst intervention and dependency, overall enhancing the payment speed.
2. Enabling Self Service to the customers: In the earlier days, customers used to dig through emails for invoices manually and had to identify the invoices with the specified payment format and then communicate to the A/R representatives, who then used to spend more than 2 hours to map the invoice with preferred payment format and make the necessary payment. As a result, with the increased variability in the payment formats, this method proved to be cumbersome and tedious, especially for the A/R managers. The portal helps customers access the updated account and invoice information at all times. This resulted in customers making payments for more than 90+ invoices per day, leading to 80% faster payments.
Moreover, the portal helps customers access the updated account and invoice information at all times through a customer data repository. This resulted in customers making payments for more than 90+ invoices per day, leading to 80% faster payments.
3. Deliver invoices to customers in their preferred format: In order to have a customer-centric invoicing system, invoices are supposed to be sent to customers through mail or fax, based on their preference. At the same time, invoices that are generated after payment should be pushed onto customer portals, to let the customers have access to the invoice anytime, if necessary.
4. Ensure a single source of truth for merchants: Apart from the customers, the merchants should have a bird’s eye view of the entire process. The merchant should have direct access to the central repository and have a clear customer picture.

5. Manage complex business scenarios: Earlier, there was no grouping for the multiple child accounts of a single parent. As a result, analysts had to track all the linked parent-child relationships and then manually update the changes on a spreadsheet. This process turned out to create a lot of complexities as there was a minimal amount of visibility in the case of cluttered accounts. Post-automation, with the help of automatic grouping of parent-child relationships, the A/R and Cash management teams were able to view all the grouped child accounts without any hassle.

The benefits of a world-class shopping and billing system

As per a report by Forrester - “The US B2B e-commerce will reach $1.8 trillion and account for almost 17% of all B2B sales in the US by 2023.” With B2B companies stepping foot and trying to unleash the potential of the e-commerce industry through various methods that pave a way to enhancing customer experiences, one needs to understand that an exceptional shopping and billing system could easily trigger sales and thereby increase the overall revenue. Folks at EBSCO, have found that the implementation had the following benefits: