How to Reduce Costs and Improve Margins with B2B Supply Chain Management
While optimizing your supply chain is crucial for success, effective B2B supply chain management allows companies to significantly reduce costs while improving profit margins. This post explores how this structure can help your business streamline operations, minimize waste, and boost overall efficiency in your supply chain. Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, leveraging supply chain management will drive growth and profitability. What is B2B Supply Chain Management? B2B (Business-to-Business) supply chain management refers to all activities involved in sourcing, procurement, conversion, and logistics management between businesses. It encompasses the flow of goods, services, information, and finances from suppliers to manufacturers to wholesalers to retailers. B2B supply chain management is crucial because it enhances operational efficiency and reduces costs through better resource allocation. It improves inventory management and increases customer satisfaction through timely deliveries. Furthermore, it facilitates better decision-making with real-time data, boosts competitiveness in the market, and enables businesses to adapt quickly to market changes and disruptions. Effective B2B supply chain management can significantly impact a company’s bottom line and overall success in today’s interconnected business landscape. Common Features of a B2B Supply Chain Management System Below are the key advantages that a B2B supply chain management system can bring to your business operations: A robust supply chain management system automates the entire ordering workflow. Think of it as a tireless, expert order processing team that operates 24/7. It ensures swift, precise, and efficient order handling, freeing you to concentrate on strategic planning and business expansion. Imagine having a vigilant guardian for your stock. This feature provides continuous, up-to-the-minute visibility and control over inventory levels. It enables accurate forecasting to prevent overstocking or stockouts, maintaining optimal inventory balance. Businesses can say goodbye to time-consuming payment follow-ups. In the B2B supply chain sector, chasing payments is often a constant challenge. However, with automated customer payment functionality, the system handles debiting and receipt at the point of purchase, streamlining your cash flow management. This feature acts as your business crystal ball. By leveraging verified data and analytics, it predicts future demand trends. This empowers you to plan effectively, manage inventory, and fulfill orders efficiently, minimizing waste and optimizing resource allocation. Consider this your logistics navigator. It enhances the entire route management process, allowing real-time tracking, management, and modification of driver routes throughout the delivery and fulfillment cycle. As a result, it helps maximum efficiency in your distribution network. Benefits of a B2B Supply Chain Management System Let’s check out how a B2B supply chain management system reduces costs and increases margins for businesses. Boosting Business Operations A B2B supply chain management system is more than just software. It’s a powerful tool that helps business owners run their operations smoothly and accurately. Its key features – like order processing, inventory tracking, payment handling, and reporting – work together to make your supply chain run better. Think about a business that used to handle orders by hand. This led to slow deliveries and unhappy customers. With a new system, things change. Customers can now order when they want and track their orders easily. The business doesn’t need someone to manually take orders anymore. This saves time and makes customers happier. The system automates many tasks, reducing mistakes and speeding things up. It frees up staff to focus on more important work. At the same time, it gives customers a better experience when they order. Improving Efficiency Efficiency is key to any successful business. Saving time on tasks like taking orders, managing inventory, or creating reports directly improves your profits. B2B supply chain management systems help make your entire business more efficient. Consider a company before it had a good inventory control system. They often had too much of some products and not enough of others. Staff spent hours counting stock and guessing what to order. With a new system, this all changes: This means the business saves money, uses resources better, and can grow more easily. The system does the tedious work, letting people concentrate on tasks that really help the business improve and expand. Cutting Costs B2B supply chain management systems help businesses save money through data-driven decisions. Take a factory that used to guess production amounts, often making too much. This led to extra storage costs and wasted labor. With a new system, they now use real data to predict demand. They produce the right amount, cutting waste and saving thousands yearly. These systems do more than organize information. They help businesses make smarter choices that directly impact the bottom line. By providing accurate forecasts and real-time insights, companies can optimize production, reduce waste, and use resources more effectively. Enhancing Customer Satisfaction In B2B, relationships are key, and customer loyalty is crucial. A B2B supply chain management system is the backbone of customer satisfaction, ensuring accurate order handling and timely deliveries. Consider a coffee bean supplier serving coffee shops. With a good system, they can: For example, when a coffee shop orders beans, the system checks stock levels instantly, reserves the right amount, and sets up delivery. This speed and accuracy mean coffee shops get their beans on time, every time. By reducing errors and speeding up processes, the system helps build trust and loyalty. Coffee shops can rely on consistent, prompt service, which in turn helps them serve their own customers better. This reliability is what turns one-time buyers into long-term partners, boosting overall customer satisfaction and business success. How to Reduce Costs and Improve Margins with B2B Supply Chain Management Using Atom8 B2B Atom8 B2B offers powerful tools to streamline your supply chain and boost profitability. Its advanced inventory management system prevents overstocking and stockouts, reducing holding costs and lost sales. Automated order processing minimizes errors and speeds up fulfillment, improving customer satisfaction while cutting labor costs. Moreover, real-time analytics provide insights for data-driven decisions, optimizing pricing and identifying cost-saving opportunities. With route optimization features, you can reduce transportation expenses. By integrating these functions, this specialized product for B2B companies from GritGlobal helps trim operational costs,
Top 5 workflows by Atom8
Automation brings many undeniable advantages including higher production rates and increased productivity. It helps you to gain more efficient use of materials, better product quality and reduced factory lead times. Atom8 with a wide range of useful workflows, has become one of the most powerful automation tools in the eCommerce industry. Let’s look at its top 5 workflows to understand how powerful Atom8 is. These are selected based on their popularity and highly favored level by users when it comes to time-saving and easy-to-use settings. Schedule a promotion campaign In seasonal campaigns like Christmas or Black Friday, every store both online and offline seems to be busier than ever. In fact, staff has to stay up late to update sales price to hundreds of products, even switch banner ads back and forth. Merchants who wear multiple hats have to spare time for updating products information without fully enjoying their cozy moments with their family. Moreover, some merchants have to hire new staff to take care of running promo campaigns (2000$/mo). These may cost merchants a large amount of time and money. But with Atom8’s help, you can save those for things that really matter. Based on the time trigger, the workflow used to schedule a promotion campaign also starts with defining time to run. Then, make sure the Data filter is “Product” before setting conditions for the action. You can run a promotion on a certain product category, product type or inventory level. It depends on the purpose of your campaign. In the next step, you will have 4 options to change the price. It could be reduced by % or a certain amount of $. You can also fix a sale price number or remove it after a period of “Delay” time. Finally, determine the workflow status, name, description and activation duration in the settings before saving all the actions. This step is applied for all the workflows by Atom8. Segment customers based on total orders This workflow’s purpose is to deal with 2 big problems that any eCommerce business may have, which are time consumption and human errors. In fact, for a store with hundreds of customers created per month, the staff will have to check those customers one by one and assign them to the right group every day. This not only takes their time but also reduces the staff productivity. Plus, manual tasks like this will cause serious human errors, such as wrong customer groups; which affect the marketing result seriously and more importantly, you will treat treated unfairly. This will affect their experience with merchants’ brands too. To run this workflow, first, you need to set conditions for the number of orders, and total amount of spending if necessary. For example, you can have the figures set as follows. And once the conditions are met, it will automatically assign that customer to the predetermined group. Notify your staff about unfulfilled orders after several days When information about the product, order and customer events is not shared among the teams in real-time, it puts a delay on the next process in queue. As a result, notification will also reach out to customers later than expected and impact customer experience. That is why you need this workflow to keep the team operation running in the smoothest way. You just need to set a delay time before checking the conditions. Then if the order status is not shipped/completed, your staff will be informed right away to have proper reactions. Notify of inventory level As soon as your inventory reaches a certain number, it will automatically send emails to the marketing team to stop promoting that product. Thus, it helps to save marketing costs for your business. Moreover, your staff can re-order with vendors on time, ensuring a smooth operation. This feature of Atom8 can also integrate with BackOrder to gain better outcomes. When the inventory falls to 0, the app will automatically switch the buying button to “Back Order” status. So that customers can still purchase the products and it remains a continuous revenue stream. The workflow can be set based on the inventory level or “low stock” conditions as below: Email customers if an order is not fulfilled after several days Sometimes, merchants use a special payment gateway which captures the payment after a period of time. Meanwhile, merchants can not memorize such milestones. This leads to the payment capture delay and wrong information in the order which might lead to the late shipment to customers. In order to save time and effort, you can use this workflow. The conditions should be: If the order status is equal to Shipped and If the Payment method is equal to Authorize.net Then it will auto-capture payment. Above are the 5 most popular workflows of Atom8. Hopefully, you can choose the right solutions for your BigCommerce store and enhance its prosperity.
Differences between quote and invoice
When it comes to the back end of running a service business, there’s a lot to learn. From communicating with clients through different stages of a job, to billing your clients, to staying on top leads and customers, and finally cash flow, keeping your business organized can be a challenge. If you haven’t realized this yet –– quote and invoice documents you use to communicate to clients are one of the best ways to stay on top of everything. From an initial quote to a final invoice, what you send out and store internally can be one of the easiest ways for you and your team to stay in the loop. So, what exactly are quote and invoice? How are they different? How can you use them to optimize and organize your service business? Where can you get started? You probably have a lot of questions, so let’s dive in. What is a quote? A quote is the complete and final cost of what you plan to charge for a job before it starts. Unlike an estimate, a quote is sent after you have visited a job site and have accurate information about material costs, property size and condition, and labor requirements. Quotes should include all the costs associated with a job, including taxes, discounts, materials, and labor. Once you send a quote to a client, they will need to sign off and approve it before you can start a job. Many businesses also require a deposit on the total amount before starting any work. A quote should always come before an invoice. The total amount you bill a client for will generally be the same as the initial quote. However, it may change if the scope of the work changed after starting the job, or if you’ve underpriced the work significantly. Either way, you would need to discuss this with the client. What are the benefits of writing quotations? Home service quotes help keep you and your prospects or leads organized If you’re not writing your leads quotes, how are you able to keep track of who’s who, which projects are which, and what leads are the most promising for your business to pursue? For example, if you meet a prospect on the street and write them an estimate for a job on a business card and hand it over, how will you remember when to follow up? What will you say in the follow-up text or email? Will you have their contact information for the follow-up as well? Now, let’s scale this scenario. What happens when you meet several leads in one day? This can become an impossible task if you’re not using hard copies of quotes. It isn’t any easier if you’re relying on pen and paper either. Finding a digital quoting software solution, like Jobber, can make this much easier. If you’re not ready to scale up to software, using a free quoting tool, like Job Toolkit is an amazing alternative. Look for an option that empowers you to write professional and organized quotes; collect and store client information; and send automatic follow-up emails and texts to your clients for you. Keeping track of who you provided a quote to and when will help you to build a strategy around leads and prospective clients. This comes in handy when you start to focus more on strengthening your lead generation game and upping your chances of turning more leads into committed clients. Quotes help you monitor scope. Sometimes, a job turns out to be a lot more work than you anticipated. This could either be due to unforeseen issues or increasing client demands. When this happens, quotes can come in handy. Since quotes break down specific line items for a job, it’s easy to reference each line item to see what the original scope of the project was. In addition to that, you can use a quote to show your client what higher-scope services or packages are and what they will cost them. With optional packages, you’re able to present a full range of options for your clients to choose from. What is an invoice? An invoice is a bill that you send to a client once a job has been completed. Unlike a quote, you send an invoice after a job. An invoice should include a complete breakdown of the costs associated with a project as well as payment information, such as a due date, payment methods, subtracted deposits, etc. Once clients receive an invoice, they should make a payment within the timeframe you provide (for example, within two weeks, 30 days, or at the end of the month). If they don’t, you may choose to charge a late fee or interest on the amount due, depending on your late payment policy. Ideally, you should send an invoice within 24-48 hours of completing a job. Try to send it after you’ve completed the clean-up and a final walkthrough with the client to ensure they’re satisfied. What are the benefits of using invoices? Keep cash flow organized. Invoices are a great way to keep track of finished jobs, incoming payments, and overdue client bills. By noting when an invoice is sent, setting specific payment due dates, and building a communication strategy for late or overdue payments, you’ll have a solid understanding of what your cash flow looks like. Plus, you’ll know when to expect incoming cash, which will allow you to plan for expenses and work out a budget. Tell clients how to pay and when Legitimate invoices include information about how to make payments, and when they are due. When clients have straightforward and convenient payment options; like credit and debit card payments they’re more likely to pay on time. With invoice software, you’ll be able to tell which clients have yet to pay their invoices, and which invoices have been paid. You’ll have a better understanding of your cash flow health. Your invoices should specify how to make payments when they’re due, and what
Learn from these top real-life 5 eCommerce cross-sell examples
Thanks to cross-selling, a lot of famous eCommerce businesses can earn billions of dollars each year. However, not all businesses can boost revenues by conducting cross-sell strategies like the famous ones. Therefore, our article today will bring 5 examples of the real cross-selling cases from well-known businesses to you to help you withdraw some valuable lessons and thus apply to your own business contexts. These 5 eCommerce Cross-sell Examples Can Inspire You Madewell As a clothing store, Madewell has successfully gained millions of dollars from its cross-selling strategies. Their cross-selling focuses on the product pages, and the product recommendations appear when the customers view product information. Below currently viewed products, Madewell recommends a list of products which are called “you might also love”. They have utilized the customers’ data to generate cross-sell suggestions and optimize the data functions. They do not focus only on current customers’ behaviors but also refer to other customers who have the same behaviors and same interests to produce recommendations. Lush Lush is famous for their organic products, including cosmetics, hair care, body care and bath bombs. Particularly, they are also famous for their cross-sell strategies. Lush’s cross-selling focuses on products which are currently selling and getting positive ratings. They also use product pages for showing the lists of cross-sell items, which are called “Lushies are loving these right now”. As you can see, they called their customers “Lushies”, which is a close, friendly name to communicate with them better and enhance the effectiveness of cross-selling as well. Therefore, you should align your branding approaches with cross-selling strategies to double success. Wayfair As the big online marketplace, Wayfair offers their customers a variety of products types which support customers ‘ daily life. They usually use cross-sell strategies to boost sales on related products. Wayfair chooses the checkout page to generate in-cart cross-sell recommendations which are closely related to in-cart products to help customers have better experience. Moreover, Wayfair usually suggests lower cost products, compared to the in-cart ones, to alleviate the cost burden of customers and reduce shopping cart abandonment. Asics While Asics is only famous for shoes, they also earn a considerable amount of revenue from their clothes and accessories. Like Apple, Asics also suggests complementary products at the checkout stage. However, instead of recommending a list of products, Asics suggest only one product at a cheaper price to persuade customers to put one more item into their shopping carts. Therefore, if you want to cross-sell a single product like Asics, you should make it affordable and reasonable. Target As a furniture and frame brand, Target chose to conduct cross-sell in sets. This is an advanced form of complementary recommendation but it also helps Target advertise their collection cleverly. This approach can help the customers furnish and decorate their room more quickly and pretty without too much effort and research. Conclusion With the real cross-sell examples in eCommerce stores, we hope that you can draw some particular lessons. So that you can conduct their own cross-selling, boost revenues and customer satisfaction. Moreover, we also suggest to use a product recommendation tool to make it easier.
