3 Smart Ways to Fast & Frictionless CPG B2B E-commerce

| Manufacturing

shelf management using smartphone scanning solution

B2B e-commerce spells big business for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) manufacturers. One in three B2B organizations report that over 50 percent of their overall revenues originate from digital channels according to a Salesforce study.

It’s time to enhance your CPG e-commerce strategy by elevating the B2B buyer’s purchase experience with the same ordering convenience that they’ve come to expect as consumers – easy-to-use digital self-service, faster ordering and instant access to product information.

Buyer satisfaction is important for high frequency or independent convenience stores such as mom and pop stores, corner shops and late shops, which lack the luxury of relying on large in-house IT teams for support, or mature reordering processes to track stock replenishments. The reach, societal role and revenue potential of these stores is huge, and they should be offered flexibility when purchasing products.

Reordering Challenges Faced by Convenience Store Buyers

Unfortunately, most convenience store buyers are burdened with time-consuming, manual ordering processes that CPG manufacturers offer them. These traditional ordering processes increase the risk of errors during product purchases, as buyers have to thumb through volumes of printed product catalogs, or scour through the online versions, type in long product codes, or convey them over the phone to customer service or sales teams at CPG manufacturers. Occasionally, the process is facilitated by a B2B salesperson who visits the stores to help with product reordering, which is an added cost to the manufacturer.

CPG manufacturers must address and simplify the reordering challenges of B2B customers. In turn, this can help lead to revenue increases for the CPGs by improving the buying experience and frequency for their buyers.

We’ve detailed below three smart ways CPG businesses can transform the ubiquitous smartphone into a powerful reordering tool. By integrating these devices with high-performance scanning, CPG manufacturers can add ease and efficiency to the ordering process and improve buyer engagement.

1. Empower buyers with frictionless scanning-enabled capabilities

Adoption of new technology for reordering products is crucial for CPG product buyers. They already have a high level of comfort using apps on smart devices to order goods and services as B2C customers. As part of their CPG e-commerce strategy, manufacturers can provide buyers with the same frictionless mobile app scanning experience they are accustomed to in their personal lives.

This video shows how to add barcode scanning to any device.

https://vimeo.com/288580027

While B2C customers usually make one-off purchases, B2B buyers on the other hand, place larger volume or more specialized orders, often as repeat business, and as part of their everyday jobs. This makes it even more crucial for CPG manufacturers to equip store buyers with automated, on-the-go ordering solutions such as scanning-enabled smart devices that perform consistently well and improve ordering efficiency.

2. Decide what works best: native apps or web apps

Once you’ve made the decision to offer smartphone scanning for your B2B buyers, it’s important to consider integration requirements early on as part of your CPG e-commerce strategy. For instance, if you have an existing ordering platform or back-end systems like SAP or Salesforce, the app will need to seamlessly integrate with it.

Additionally, you’ll need to be aware of the location where the reordering is taking place. Some convenience stores operate in remote locations which are prone to unreliable internet connectivity. In such scenarios, downloading a scanning-enabled order app from an app store can be a problem. Integrating your ordering platform with a web application might be a better option, as there’s no set-up required, or need for downloading a native app – all of which makes reordering more convenient, intuitive and easy to use.

3. Ensure error-free high performance reordering

CPG manufacturers who provide a poor digital ordering process risk losing customers and revenue owing to abandoned online baskets and buyer dissatisfaction. This also places a costly burden on sales teams who then end up helping disgruntled buyers with their product ordering.

Whether facilitating the B2B ordering process through a web app or native app, integrating a superior scanning solution will remove bottlenecks in the user experience. A high-performance scanning solution will scan product barcodes in any condition such as glare, varying distances, on shelves with crammed SKUs and even damaged barcodes. This will create a frictionless ordering/reordering process, as customers can quickly and accurately scan to purchase products.

Watch fast and accurate barcode scanning performance in action

https://vimeo.com/189061879

CPG manufacturers can also offer additional features such as text recognition and Augmented Reality overlays to native mobile apps, enabling buyers to access additional product information in real-time as part of the reordering process. This is useful for boosting order volumes and raising revenue by empowering customers with additional product information such as rewards and loyalties associated with specific products, stock levels, expiry dates and more.

Want to know more? Download our guide on Driving CPG Revenue through Digitalized B2B E-commerce Ordering where you will gain more information about how to create a fast and frictionless buying experience with scan and search, creating a cart on-the-go functionality and more, to find and purchase products, and more insights on how to get rid of time-intensive manual processes.