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An
essential tool for both the buyers and sellers, a B2B portal
carry tremendous potential to take your business on the upward
trajectory. TFW highlights the benefits of B2B portals
"In
India, lakhs of MSMEs are already availing benefits through
their memberships on online B2B marketplaces. According to a
recent study by IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association India) on
SMEs, 55 per cent of SMEs are already subscribing to online B2B
marketplace to promote and sell their products or services,"
say Dinesh Agarwal, CEO and Founder, IndiaMART.
How B2B portal functions
"Working of a B2B portal is very simple. Buyer and
suppliers need to get registered on a B2B portal by opening an
account. Registration can be either paid or free. Paid
registration gives you additional benefits like adding pictures
in your online catalogues, SMS alerts etc. A buyer can log in
his account on the B2B portal and can search for companies in
the vertical desired by him and simultaneously can send an
enquiry to the sellers. Accordingly, he will receive replies
from the suppliers from which he can choose the best deal,"
explains Krishan Kumar, Vice president, India Operations at
Trade Mart.
Dinesh Agarwal
CEO and Founder, IndiaMART
"In India, lakhs of MSMEs are already
availing benefits of their online memberships of B2B
marketplaces. According to a recent study by IAMAI (Internet
and Mobile Association of India) on SMEs, 55 per cent of the
SMEs are already subscribing to online B2B marketplaces to
promote and sell their products or services." range
available online reduces the lead time drastically,
resulting in huge time and cost saving for both buyers and
suppliers," explains Agarwal.
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Benefits for SMEs
Technology generally comes at a high cost. However, the B2B
portal is a low cost medium to reach your target customers or
buyers. All you need is a computer with a web browser. The
benefits of B2B Portals are manifold. Some of them are listed
here:
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Cost
factor
"Online B2B marketplaces are available not only 24x7,
buy they also break geographic barriers and provide greater
visibility to companies. Making the business and product.
"Everything is done on a virtual platform, things are
just a click away and therefore, there is a substantial
reduction in money, resources and time that would have been
spent otherwise. These B2B portals also provide exposure to
one's business in the e-market place," says Sanjeev
Bogna, CEO, Maham Exports.
Exploring new markets
"B2B portals help in exploring new markets. They give
SMEs an edge to showcase their products to multiple vendors
across the globe by doing away with all geographical
barriers that SMEs confront with. Any buyer or seller
sitting in two different corners of the globe have an access
to each other." opines Bikky Khosla, CEO, TradeIndia.
Marketing & Branding
SMEs generally don't have big marketing budgets and the
portals have become the right source for them to promote and
attract new customers. Through B2B portals SMEs have the
opportunity to promote their products and services at a much
lower cost. Branding options at B2B portals are also
significantly much budget friendly for SMEs.
Search engine optimisation
 A
B2B portal is one of the main constituents of E-Commerce and
hence helps in search engine optimisation also. Priority
listing given in the B2B portals enables the search engines
to priorities the concerned company "Search Engines
also prefer these portals since they offer large aggregated
database of suppliers at one place," explains Agarwal.
"We create websites for companies (called online
catalogs) and optimise them for different search engines
based on their products and services. We divide all the
industries into several categories and sub-categories and
optimise them for search engines. Hence, we are promoting
several companies through a single category or sub-category,"
explains Khosla.
Updating content
One of the most important aspects of conducting business
via B2B portal is the content. If the content is not updated
as and when it becomes necessary, you might not get the
desired results.
In a B2B portal updating content is very flexible. It can
be done either by the client himself, by updating his
profile in his account or by the concerned team of the
portal like a moderator who updates both the content and the
product gallery of the users from time to time. This is done
on a daily or weekly basis, based on the feedback received
by the client. B2B Portals carry tremendous potential to
take your business on the upward trajectory.
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