Supply chains play as blood vessels in the corporation body. Therefore, the supply chain management needs to be invested more to enhance fluent stock flow from suppliers, sellers to buyers and boost your B2B eCommerce revenues. How to conduct effective supply chain management is still a question that needs us to find the answer. This article is going to suggest some practices to manage the B2B eCommerce supply chain effortlessly.
B2B eCommerce Supply Chain Management Best Practices
Effective Inventory Management
Inventory management is the backbone of SCM. The business runners need to conduct an inventory audit to check the stock status and ensure the reasonable matching between financial reports and actual stock quantity. This procedure also prevents mistakes during inventory management, which can be fundamental for storing and selling activities.
Inventory management includes various stock-related processes such as ordering, restocking, storing, and forecasting. It would be better if you can take advantage of the inventory management system to reduce manual mistakes and enhance consistency during this monitoring stock flow. Especially, if you are running a multi-channel business in different locations, the inventory management becomes more complicated so you need to use the system to streamline the process, provide real-time updates and take immediate actions for necessary adjustments.
Utilize Omnichannel
Omnichannel allows businesses to sell via different channels, store stocks at different distribution centers and manage all of them via centralized systems. The business runner can take advantage of omnichannel to monitor selling activities and inventory management. All the data can be updated and accessible.
All the customers, sellers and suppliers can track the inventory and the supply chains to supply more stocks, buy more products and control selling activities strictly. While this approach can be necessary for small business, it is truly crucial for larger businesses and enterprises. If you are expanding your B2B eCommerce companies, you should utilize omnichannel for better supply chain management.
Intelligent Order Management
The B2B eCommerce ordering process needs to be automated and done in minutes. Then, it’s necessary to update the order status and information immediately to the accessible tracking systems. The customers can keep track of their orders and the sellers can estimate the arrival date of the shipments based on the current shipping status. Both of them can control the shipping and identify potential problems to take immediate action and avoid late delivery.
Dropshipping
A lot of low-cost businesses conduct dropshipping to reduce the shipping cost, stock storage cost and logistics cost. This model also offers the customers various products from different warehouses but they still can receive fast-delivery orders. The process of dropshipping is much more fluent, low-cost and low-risk and the sellers can flexibly choose the suppliers who can deliver faster.
Plan For Uncertainty
To reduce the supply chain risks, businesses need to plan for future uncertainty. For example, the sellers need to diversify distributors to minimize the risks of out-of-stock; and ensure to fulfill all the orders. Moreover, based on the selling data and current trends, the sellers can forecast the demand of customers in the near future; to prepare for inventory and logistics procedures.
Conclusion
Effective supply chain management can boost your B2B eCommerce revenues significantly. You can follow our suggestions to strengthen your supply chains and thus make your customers happier.