E-commerce in the B2B space
Hiren Vakhariya, MD and CEO, Innovator, discusses how agencies and operators can benefit from being present in the online realm.
‘More, the merrier’ is the soul of a Business to Business (B2B) model. But more the operational stages, longer are the communication cycles and delayed deliveries. Undoubtedly, reinventing operating models is the need of the hour. It is the combination of updated technologies along with quality products. Whether you are operating in the B2B space or the B2C space, there are some things that will always delight your customers – ontime delivery in lesser time and lower costs, over-communication and transparency in products.
Despite being the thirdlargest user base in world, India’s penetration of Internet is low compared to markets like the United States, United Kingdom or France. Nevertheless, it is growing at a much faster rate than the other countries, adding around six million new entrants every month. As a result, e-commerce in the travel industry is increasing every year. The industry therefore requires frequent product upgradation through technology. Electronic data exchange, sales and marketing to financial transfers, technology aids in simplifying and streamlining a lot of processes.
E-commerce offers a company an opportunity to grow. Many have started investing in mobile applications since mobile commerce is also playing a big role in e-commerce. But my question is, is that only applicable in the B2C segment or can we also apply technical solutions to the B2B companies as well? Here are a few specific ideas on the B2B side for e-commerce.
There are DMCs and there are B2B companies. Both are different and so both should have different technological platform to manage their operations effectively. Unlike in the past, it is no longer advisable nor affordable for B2B companies to work offline. For example, their clients – B2C travel agencies – used to send them an email for quotations. B2B agents have to work out a quote and reply to them. There are lots of chances that some key data is missed, or an entire enquiry is missed, or not replied in time. Due to this lack of complete communication on time, the B2C agent might lose the booking and the client may directly book online.
How can technology play a major role here? If a B2B player has an online platform, it makes life easy for them as well as their customer (B2C agent). There is no need for back and forth of enquiries. B2C agents can just enter the portal of B2B agents and create their own quotation 24X7. See how life can become easy for even B2C agents? Plus, all MIS reports, accounts, destination effectiveness, hotel effectiveness, etc. can be measured easily. Technology can help automate operations as well as accounts. Capturing content
Another idea for B2B e-commerce is aggregation of user-generated contents. Content is king and this is particularly true in the travel space. This is a big challenge for new start-ups in the travel and leisure space as amassing a treasure trove of reviews and content is non-trivial and companies like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Foursquare and Gogobot have already established a strong foothold. Methods of aggregating this data for new up-starts to process and capture across publishers is powerful for both consumers and publishers alike and would be great to have a robust solution to process and aggregate this data for distribution across new and existing publishers. ( The views expressed are solely of the author. The publication may or may not subscribe to the same.)