E-commerce will certainly continue to grow for B2C in 2021. The combination of convenience, broad offering, and enhanced efficiency favors the buyer but inevitably leads to cost-per-unit and cash flow benefits for the seller. However, we also believe that in the next five years e-commerce will experience a further boost throughout the entire supply chain. I’m talking B2B now: Many players have already understood that they can perfectly well offer online services providing they have a professional online presence, they have adjusted their offering to suit the new channels, and they have a solution for B2B customers to pay efficiently and, preferably, immediately.
It (almost) goes without saying that this will require actors in the supply chain to take an assertive step forward toward innovating their services, broadening their horizons, and embracing the opportunities that will trigger new revenue streams. Just like retailers, these actors will need to find a good balance between online and offline, to avoid platform-only players whizzing past their asset-based businesses, leaving them way behind in the game.
Today, in Europe, we see the first trends arising; B2B e-commerce is proving to be a great opportunity for the sector to generate new revenue streams and gain on back-office efficiency, while — in most cases — operational processes are not affected.
Our advice? Give your innovation team enough room to be focused and lay their cards on B2B e-commerce opportunities, because there is plenty to be reaped. Speaking of which, a must for e-commerce success, the monetization of these innovations — or, in other words, how B2B customers are going to pay for these innovative services — is the simple part: cinvio takes care of immediate payments from wallet to wallet, digitally, allowing our customers to simply focus on, well, those e-commerce opportunities that will engender new revenues.