Business to Business Procurement

It is important to note that E-commerce is not just merely shopping online. The uses of this technology can be implemented successfully in B2B applications. B2B is the selling between companies at wholesale, on trade, and account. It helps to track inventory, orders, regulate discounts, manage distributor demand and provide a detailed history of transactions in a decentralized application.

There are two main types of B2B E-commerce sites, the verticals and the horizontals. The Vertical website will predominately focus on a specific industry, such as retail. Linking the Wholesaler with its distributors or vendors. Verticals are most likely to contain industry information in the form of news, articles, events and more recently networking web 2.0 features.

The second the Horizontal provide products or services that are not specific to an industry, they may provide a retailer with travel services, office equipment, branding distribution etc. Auction websites for example allow multiple buyers to bid on products by multiple individual suppliers. The reverse of this allows retailers to post their need for a specific service and receive tenders and quotes from which they can choose.

Catalogue aggregators such as Jump.co.za or hippo.co.za, allow for the comparison of various retailers, vendors or companies by drawing the information directly from their systems. This allows the consumer to do quick comparisons and choose according to their own requirements, whether it be price or location etc.

Sightings can implement these systems in your business and develop the customizations you may need in order to achieve your goals. If you would like to know more please contact us to set-up a consultation.