B2B software solutions: What Software Development Company to Choose?
The market for mobile and web development for B2B companies is overflowing with offers from studios, agencies and individual freelancers. Many offer the best prices, promising the best quality – but practice shows that in some cases the promises remain so, and rewriting the bad code of an unscrupulous programmer then costs several times more than the initial order. What to look for in order not to be mistaken when choosing a b2b solution developer is below.
B2B solutions: types, capabilities, functions
There are several types of b2b solutions, which differ depending on the functionality, and, accordingly, the complexity of the development:
A bulletin board or classifier is a place where suppliers post information about their products and services, and buyers find their contacts for communication outside the site. The functionality should allow you to rank users, promote some ads to the top of the search results, have a well-thought-out search that takes into account various characteristics of goods.
Marketplace is a solution that collects suppliers and buyers on a single platform, allowing you to conclude transactions within the site and acting as a guarantor of their safety. In addition to ranking users, a good search engine and product listing should be linked to the payment system. The advantage of the marketplace will also be the ability to exchange documents accompanying the transaction (for example, linking to electronic document flow).
The tender platform is a type of marketplace that allows conducting electronic tenders, auctions, reductions, supplier selection competitions, requesting and comparing prices and terms of commercial offers. Should be able to select offers in multiple stages, link the payment system, EDI, conduct different types of tenders within one platform.
A platform for low-value purchases is a solution that is developed for one or several large buyers, thus solving the problem of small purchases (relative to the size of their usual transactions). Such a platform should also provide the ability to conduct a multi-stage selection of suppliers’ proposals with the choice of the best prices and conditions, linking a payment system, EDM, etc.
B2B-portal is a solution for automating sales and processing bulk orders, allowing you to track the availability of goods in the supplier’s warehouses, maintain electronic document flow , make payments and prepare financial reports, connect to third-party trading platforms and marketplaces.
All of these sites should be able to show the current balances of goods in the warehouse, personalize prices, catalog, staff access levels, as well as set up a discount system, make bonus offers, offer the sale of related products, send email, and provide marketing tools.
Professional b2b portal development company is ready to carry out the task of any level of difficulties.
Choosing a b2b developer
Why does it matter that B2B solutions are multi-level and multi-component systems that often need to be adjusted to the existing complex business processes in large corporations that have evolved over decades. This requires an absolute understanding of all the details of the vendor-side sales process and the buy-side purchase process. Most often, this requires a deep understanding of the business from the inside.
Therefore, you should not expect that any first-comer agency, studio or individual contractor will be able to create such a platform. As a rule, they offer low prices – but these low prices are due to a lack of experience and understanding of the complexity of the task.
