On January 23 and 24, the 13th edition of the Webwinkel Vakdagen took place in Utrecht. An e-commerce fair with a special focus on digital transformation. The signal for us to go and see what's going on with our neighbors to the north.
We quickly came to the conclusion that there is a strong BtoC market in the Netherlands. Talk about kicking down an open door! There is a wide range of web shops, IT solutions as well as logistics players focusing on the BtoC market.
BtoC solutions in a BtoB market.
However, we did notice that they are much less likely to translate these BtoC solutions to a BtoB market. How can a BtoB player translate these developments into their own strategy? Can you apply these principles in an omnichannel approach where you manage your inventory regardless of where it is located? Answering these questions becomes increasingly crucial to success.
The impact on your business model
E-commerce is a stream of data that you process smartly rather than a stream of products. The latter is just a consequence! The way you digitize, because that's what e-commerce is, can have a big impact on your business model. Successful digitization does mean doing it with respect for your strategy, your operation and your customer. Then you will find that e-commerce offers you many more benefits, than purely setting up a BtoC sales channel.
Smart digitization allows you to align your processes much better. For example, you integrate all your sales channels according to the strategy of your company so that they reinforce each other. This makes you much more performant and relevant in the eyes of your customer and allows you to optimize your logistics flows. No more non-communicating sales channels, no more separate stock management according to each sales channel and no more slow BtoB logistics services!
We, as an e-fulfilment service provider, focus strongly on digitalization among our customers and ourselves. This is how we manage to set up e-commerce processes for all types of markets. Regardless of whether these are BtoB, BtoC or a combination of both. Digitization gives us the ability to be a strategic logistics extension and align our operation to all your sales channels from a single inventory.
