B2B Ecommerce Checklist for Foodservice FMCG brands

Choosing the best B2B ecommerce solution for your brand

The right platform will dramatically reduce your costs, minimising admin time and effort, eliminating expensive mistakes, making it easier and faster to serve your customers.

The best solution will do more than reduce costs, it will also increase sales by upselling to your existing customers, and putting your brand and product in front of thousands of buyers to win new customers.

It's important to pick a solution that represents your brand properly – you work hard and invest good money into your brand, so don't let bad software sabotage that. Your customer's wholesale buying experience is a direct reflection of your brand – so make sure the customer experience lives up to your standards.

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Questions to ask when researching B2B ecommerce

• Easy for Buyers – Is it easy for my buyers to view my catalogue, to see what's in and out of stock, and to place all their orders from their computer, tablet and phone?
• Price Lists & Catalogues – Can I easily manage custom pricing structures and custom catalogues for all of my different buyers?
• Branding & images – Can I easily update my branding, brand profile, product images, product descriptions and promotions?
• Made for Wholesale – Can it process all my wholesale orders including: Supermarket orders, emails, purchase orders, PDF files, and CSV files?
• Quality Integrations – Does it properly connect to my finance and inventory software and easily sync my data effortlessly, without delays?
• Payment Handling – Is it easy to set payment terms, collect payments, send invoices, and reconcile the payments to my accounts?
• Order Tracking – Does it handle order tracking and logistics, with status updates, proof of delivery photos and signatures?
• Customer Management – Can I organise customers into groups, to apply different rules for ordering, delivery runs & payments?
• Repeat Orders – Can I put my customers on an automatic schedule that can be edited by my customers?
• Pick, Pack & Production – Can I easily generate a report of all orders that need to be produced and packed?
• Minimum Orders – Does it automatically tell customers when they fall below my minimum required order size?
• Promotional Tools – Does it have tools to promote my products & brand, to upsell and win new buyers?
• Mobile App – Can my sales reps, and my customers, easily do everything they need from their phone?

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Problems to avoid when selecting a B2B ecommerce solution

• Poor customer reviews
  • Check Google reviews, app store reviews, and other rating sites
• Poor service
  • Do your own reference checks – ask what problems people have experienced
  • How often do you need help? Avoid if it’s frequent!
  • How long does it take to get help?
  • Are they able to fix problems straight away?
  • Is the help friendly?
  • Are there good online help docs with videos?
• Poor integrations
  • This is hard to know until it's too late – so do your own reference checks, talk to users and ask about problems with integrations
  • Do the transactions and data flow instantly and reliably between systems?
  • Does it integrate all the critical data – not just some of the data?
  • This is one of the most important things to get right – integrations done poorly makes your life and your data a nightmare, it makes a mess of your finances, and a mess for your customers
• Hidden fees
  • Watch out when the pricing isn't shown on their website
  • Watch out for setup fees
  • Watch out for commission fees
  • Watch out for support fees
• Poor brand experience
  • Make sure the buying experience is simple for buyers, otherwise it reflects poorly on your brand
  • Make sure your brand and your products are displayed and showcased up to your standards
• Make sure it's not a Portal
  • Portals can only serve your existing customers – they can't put your brand and products in front of new wholesale buyers
  • Portals make it harder for your customers – it requires a separate login, and they can't search and track all their orders across all their suppliers

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Read reviews of the Upstock B2B ecommerce solution

• Upstock customer reviews
• Google reviews about Upstock‍
• iPhone app store reviews about Upstock‍
• Android app store reviews about Upstock‍
• Xero app store reveiws about Upstock