Must-Have Integrations for a Robust B2B Marketplace Platform
The pillar of a successful B2B marketplace is its ability to retain your customers. To do this, your platform should give a great value to everyone who uses it.
As B2B operations are very complex and require multiple decision makers, try to provide all the necessary tools for their seamless digital experience.
One of the ways to achieve this is to integrate your marketplace with third-party software.
These integrations should align with the specifics of your business and simplify the way your customers interact with your platform.
Source: BigCommerce
To make your B2B marketplace more robust, analyze the customer segments and think about what can make their work more effective.
We have prepared a list of integrations you can add to your B2B marketplace. Let’s dive right into them.
Most popular integrations that will boost user experience of your customers
Point of sales system
POS systems allow you to connect your inventory to the online marketplace, manage your customers, transactions, and products. In addition, they enable merchants to sort all their merchandise and track the data of each item. With point of sale system retailers can access all their data on the go even without the Internet connection.
Here are some of the top POS systems you can consider:
Features
- Custom receipts
- Cash management
- Layaways and on-account sales
- Returns, refunds, and store credits
- Integrated payment options and ability to connect POS to your bank
Features
- Stock ordering directly from the POS
- Inventory tracking
- Reporting and analytics
- Integrated payments
- Upsell/cross sell tools
- Integrated shipping
- Different variations of checkout pages
Features
- Customer directory
- Generation and printing of bar code labels
- Inventory tracking across all locations
- Integrated payment processing
Shipping API
Shipping APIs integrate with regional and global carriers and provide multicarrier support. It helps you to automate and improve your shipping process, and, as a result, a customer service.
With the help of shipping API, you can:
- Manage orders
- Track shipment
- Compare courier shipping rates
- Create customer order forms and invoices
- Get accurate shipping rates
- Provide the seamless shopping experience and in-time delivery to your users
Features
- Batch label printing
- Refunds
- Multiple users per account
- Custom forms
- Shipping labels
- CSV upload
- Return labels
- Address validation
- Branded tracking pages
Features
- Major carrier support around the world
- Real-time tracking
- Rates comparison
- Global address validation
- Label generation
- Easy to print DHL Express label
Features
- Print labels
- Calculate real-time shipping rates
- Manage orders from multiple channels in one place
- Manage shipper accounts
Rating and review system
Rating and review systems will help your brand to gain trust and authority on the market. By integrating a rating and review system into your marketplace, you get an opportunity to track and manage reviews your users leave.
Manufacturers and retailers can quickly respond to reviews from any device in real time and see reporting and analytics of the posted reviews.
Features
- Respond to customer reviews and queries from multiple sites
- In-depth reporting
- Distribution of content to different channels
- Custom alerts on reviews activity
- Real-time problem tracking
Features
- Mobile and tablet support
- Video and photo reviews
- Detailed reporting
- Review syndication
- Full social media integration
СRM
CRM system is an all-in-one tool where businesses can store customer data, track their journey via the sales funnel with ClickFunnels, manage leads, and share reports with the team.
When it comes to online marketplaces, having all the customer data at the fingertips is crucial. Integration of a robust CRM system is the best way to improve customer service and make your offers more personalized. In some cases it's better to consider custom CRM development for your business.
When choosing a CRM system, ensure that it provides the following features:
- Pipeline management tools
- Advanced analytics and lead insights
- Email marketing tools
- Sales automation tools
Features
- Lead capture automation
- Landing pages
- Lead qualification and sales automation
- Conversion prediction
Features
- Real-time reporting
- Sales automation
- Pipeline management
- Team collaboration
Features
- Contact management
- Workflow builder
- Calendar and reminder system
- Document storage
- Lead scoring tools
- Customer segmentation
Invoice and accounting management system
Integration of accounting management software will automate a lot of manual work when it comes to invoice processing.
Most of the accounting management software offer the following features:
- Bookkeeping
- Bill management
- Custom quotes creation
- Inventory tracking
- Payroll
- Financial reports
Features
- Bookkeeping
- Expences tracking
- Receipt scanning
- Invoice generation
- Bank reconciliation
- Sales tax calculator
Features
- Asset management
- Bank connections
- Business performance
- Multi-currency accounting
- Purchase orders
- Reporting
- Quotes
- Visual dashboard that highlights your performance
- Quotes, sales orders and invoices
- Inventory management
- Banking
- Managing due dates
- Keeping track of recurring entries
Inventory management software
Inventory management system helps you gain a full control over your assets. Usually, inventory management software includes such features:
- Barcoding
- Purchase order management
- Reordering process automation
- Demand forecasting
Features
- Purchase order management
- Landed cost allocation
- Multi-location inventory
- Stocktakes planning
- Inventory reporting
- Low-stock alerts
Features
- Inventory unification
- Bundle orders
- Barcode scanning
- Synchronization of inventory quantities across different channels
Features
- Product tracking based on expiration dates and serial numbers
- Custom alerts about low inventory levels
- Product and SKU mapping
- Managing inventory in different warehouses
- Tracking the status of manufactured item
Integrations you choose can also serve as a revenue channel for your B2B marketplace. For example, users may pay a fee to get more functionality and opportunities on your platform.
Success of your marketplace depends on the value you give to your users. Before adding third-party integrations for your platform, carefully read about all their advantages and disadvantages. Don't rely on the brand only, but choose the software that works exactly for your business.