B2B E-commerce In 2021

B2B E-commerce In 2021: Accelerating Digital India

 With the emergence of COVID-19 vaccines, the global economy is regaining its hunger for growth, and Indian manufacturers cannot afford to lose the opportunity to build back better. Time is precious and Indian manufacturers, both OEMs and MSMEs, have to seize the opportunity with speed and agility. Our manufacturing enterprises will have to focus on 3As to accelerate economic growth: affordability, accessibility, and availability. While B2C e-commerce will ensure accessibility to the last person standing, B2B e-commerce will enable manufacturers to ensure availability and affordability of goods by optimizing the supply chain.

Digital twinning of the manufacturing supply chain

Indian manufacturers will have to prioritize solving the legacy problems that surfaced through the COVID-19 experience. Major issues include reducing logistics costs and reducing the turnaround time of programmable tasks. B2B e-commerce firms can enable Indian OEMs and MSMEs to solve these problems through the digital twinning of the supply chain. Manufacturers can replicate the entire manufacturing supply chain ecosystem in a virtual environment and ensure higher pandemic-proofing levels by making several supply chain processes conducive to work-from-home and remote working models.

B2B e-commerce: A demand engine for Indian MSMEs

As recovery accelerates in 2021, restoring the demand generation for MSMEs to pre-COVID-19 levels will be crucial. This year B2B e-commerce models will enable Indian MSMEs to gain higher visibility before OEMs searching for industrial goods. B2B e-commerce firms map large scale OEM orders against supplier production capacities, TAT, ETA, cost, insurance, and freight charges using data analytics. They will be integral to connecting MSMEs to new local business opportunities.

B2B e-commerce will make all stages of brand distribution more agile

In 2021 Indian manufacturing enterprises will have to rebuild their supply chain distribution processes from the ground up with a focus on agility. They will need to compress the cycle time across different supply chain stages of make-to-order, plant-to-port, and market-to-cash. B2B e-commerce firms will enable Indian manufacturers to reduce each of these supply chain stages' turnaround time by providing robotic process automation solutions that standardize processes, repeat cyclical tasks for each order, and reduce manual efforts. 

B2B e-commerce will enable manufacturers to scale up faster

Traditionally Indian manufacturing enterprises have faced the challenge of cost inefficiencies that have impacted demand. In 2021, B2B e-commerce models will enable Indian manufacturers to reduce cost efficiencies through cloud computing solutions. Cloud-hosted SaaS models work on subscription pricing and metered billing practices. B2B e-commerce firms use such cloud-hosted SaaS models that are scalable. It means that once a digital workflow for a task is created, supply chain stakeholders like OEMs, MSMEs, logistics service providers, suppliers, and supply chain financiers can repeat the task several times at zero marginal costs. Such cloud-SaaS models' scalability will allow B2B e-commerce firms to drive economies of scale and positively impact the unit economics of industrial procurement, sales, and distribution, supplier relationship management, and direct procurement contracting.

Source Link: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/365286