Making B2B eCommerce Be About More Than Just Looks

B2B sales efforts may be migrating online, but according to B2B service provider Tradeshift, while B2B eCommerce may be stylish, many services are still the same old functions that have been seen in the industry for years.

To address this issue, Tradeshift announced Tuesday (Sept. 29) its new end-to-end solution for digital procurement, Tradeshift Buy, a tool that the company claims offers the market’s first-ever searchable product database that includes product pricing. According to Tradeshift, the new service comes after a long lull in procurement innovation.

“For the last 20 years, there’s been very little innovation in eProcurement,” said Tradeshift CEO Christian Lanng in a statement, adding that the latest services on the market have largely remained the same but with more attractive user interfaces.

[bctt tweet=”For the last 20 years, there’s been very little innovation in eProcurement.”]

“Using what we’ve learned about supplier collaboration over the last five years, we’ve taken a different approach,” Lanng said. “With Tradeshift Buy, we’ve empowered buyers with the freedom to find and buy anything they need using an intuitive buying experience.”

The company’s new solution is focused largely around product discovery and information, providing corporate buyers with a database to search for and view up-to-date information. The tool “solves the problems of too little, incomplete and expired product content by introducing the world’s first central, searchable product database,” the firm’s announcement said.

Additional features add enhanced visibility into corporate spending to safeguard companies against rogue procurement, greater functionality of a virtual storefront and an end-to-end procure-to-pay service on the platform.

Tradeshift has focused largely on the eInvoicing and billing side of B2B procurement in recent months. Last July the company struck a partnership with EcoVadis to promote the environmental sustainability offered by digital billing. But the company has made moves to expand its service offerings for the broader purpose of enhancing the digital connectivity of buyers and suppliers, as mentioned by Tradeshift Senior Marketing Leader of Industry Solutions Operations Vishal Patel in a recent interview with PYMNTS.

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