A guide to B2B cross border ecommerce

With the traditional barriers fading and technology bridging the gap between distant markets, international ecommerce is just a few clicks away.

Wonder what makes us say that? 

Well, the forecasted market value of the global e-commerce market is $6 trillion by 2024! 

Yes! Going global is brimming with growth opportunities. 

With the immense potential to expand your brand affinity, why would you leave the chance behind? 

B2B cross border ecommerce has become the new route to brand growth with more and more buyers opening up to cross-border buying.  

B2B International Ecommerce: Trends and Market Dynamics 

Here is how brands are paving the way for a more interconnected and prosperous global economy: 

• $56.1 tn is the expected global B2B cross-border payment market by 2030
• 107% growth of cross-border ecommerce transactions over the next 5 years
• $3.3 trillion in cross-border ecommerce transactions will be conducted in 2028
• 70% of ecommerce buyers have recently purchased from a foreign site 

Source: Statista, Juniper Research 

Driven by the advancements in technology, the growth of B2B cross border ecommerce has surged in recent years. Well, for the unparalleled growth opportunities that the global ecommerce market offers, more and more businesses are planning to expand their reach. As B2B businesses continue to capitalize on cross-border ecommerce potential, the trajectory for further growth remains promising. 

Benefits of B2B cross-border ecommerce

B2B cross border ecommerce offers a host of opportunities for growth and innovation to enterprise brands in the global ecommerce space. By opening access to new markets, diversifying their customer base, and providing a competitive edge, etc. cross border ecommerce facilitates significant benefits to the B2B enterprise brand owners.

Here are some key advantages of going across borders:

• Access to new markets and customers: By going cross-border, enterprise brands can access new markets beyond their already conquered domestic boundaries. Adopting e-commerce beyond geographies helps B2B brands tap into new customer segments, increase their customer base, and find new revenue streams for their business. If there’s a huge demand for your products and services in international ecommerce markets, cross-border ecommerce can be especially beneficial
• Diversification of customer base: Cross border ecommerce helps brands expand into international ecommerce markets and diversify their customer base. Once you plan to go across borders, you reduce your dependency on any single market or customer segment. Along with a diversified customer base, you also become more resilient to market-specific challenges. 
• Increases revenue potential: As you expand to new markets and cater to a diversified customer base, you can also capitalize on increased revenue potential. You can significantly expand their sales opportunities and drive revenue growth by selling to customers in multiple countries.
• Competitive advantage: B2B enterprise cross border ecommerce gives a competitive advantage to your brand. Selling globally helps brands attract more customers, expand to new horizons, etc and thus gain a competitive advantage over others who are limited to single domestic markets. 
• Scope for innovation: By exposing your brand to new ideas, technologies, and customer needs, B2B businesses can build innovative solutions. They can adapt to different market demands and develop new strategies tailored to specific international audiences.
• Enhanced brand image: B2B cross border ecommerce helps brands polish their brand image. By going global, brands can also boost their credibility by serving customers on a global scale. This step can positively influence customers, partners, and stakeholders to engage with the enterprise brand.

With all the benefits of going global, brands also need to navigate the challenges and complexities of international trade, like regulatory compliance, cultural differences, logistical challenges, etc, to realize these benefits fully.  

Challenges of B2B cross border ecommerce

B2B cross border ecommerce poses unique challenges to enterprise brands due to the complexities involved at various stages of doing business. Brands need to create a combination of strategic planning and invest in the right technology and infrastructure with a deep understanding of the global markets to capitalize on the vast opportunities offered by cross-border ecommerce. 

Here are the top 5 challenges of B2B cross border business and tips to overcome them: 

Managing vendors from multiple locations 

When you take your B2B business to international ecommerce markets, you onboard vendors from multiple locations. And this decision has multiple benefits. When you have multiple vendors from multiple locations on your enterprise cross border e-commerce marketplace, you can offer an enhanced shopping experience to your customers. 

Local vendors from various locations bring in knowledge and understanding of local markets with themselves. The more understanding and insights you have into the local preferences and tastes, you can tailor your marketing strategies that help you penetrate the market in a more impactful and effective manner.

However, managing multiple vendors on the platform can be challenging. Right from coordinating operations, ensuring consistency, and maintaining quality standards to monitoring vendor performance, and mitigating risks across multiple locations demand robust systems and processes. 

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions come with easy vendor management solutions that help you manage and onboard vendors in just a few easy steps. With the easy-to-register feature, your B2B cross border ecommerce vendors can quickly register on the platform. StoreHippo creates a unique vendor dashboard for each of your vendors. The B2B marketplace admins get full control over the vendors, products, orders, commissions, and a lot more. The admin(s) can approve or reject the products uploaded by the vendors before they are displayed on the marketplace.

Language barrier 

56.2% of buyers feel that obtaining information in their language is more important than the price. What happens when you try to communicate with your customers in a language that is foreign to them? It results in dropped purchases. You can seamlessly do away with the language barrier on your international ecommerce marketplace by offering exhaustive multilingual product details. 

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions come with a multilingual feature to help you build a marketplace that can communicate with different language-speaking audiences. You can seamlessly translate your enterprise cross border e commerce website into 100+ languages with the multilingual feature from StoreHippo including right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew. The automatic translation tool helps you translate your website in just a few steps. StoreHippo also supports multiple languages in mobile apps, thus making it easier for your global B2B marketplace to connect with its buyers. If you wish to add a direct multilingual support channel for buyer-admin-vendor chats, StoreHippo enables you to choose and integrate with the best-in-breed software for multilingual support channels.  

Location-based tax and other compliances 

A cross-border B2B ecommerce business involves international laws and taxes. Adhering to different tax laws for different countries can be quite a challenge to B2B brands. To function seamlessly in the international market, brands need to look for solutions that can minimize their legal challenges or simply automate the tax calculations. 

To make it easier for your vendors to do business, you should look for a marketplace solution provider that offers provision for multi-tier taxation features and a powerful taxing and invoicing solution. Look for a platform that supports multi currency pricing, billing, and invoicing along with built-in tax calculation solutions. 

StoreHippo comes with a powerful tax engine to simplify and automate tax calculations helping vendors to easily manage international business. Here is how you can seamlessly manage multiple tax calculations with StoreHippo:

• Integrate your B2B cross border ecommerce store with popular accounting software like ERP, accounting or any other software being used by vendors
• Easily compute different GST taxes for various products and services offered by different dealers and distributors on your B2B marketplace
• Multiple readymade and editable invoice templates for easy billing and invoicing
• Simplify international tax calculation by easily adding multiple taxes under one main tax rule
• Set multiple tax rules based on the order amount, location(state or country), service type, product type, sellers, etc. or any other criteria 
• Use the inclusive rule to show the final product pricing inclusive of the tax amount
• Simplify and automate your taxes within India with full support for GST, CGST, SGST and inter-state IGST

Shipping and logistics difficulties

Enterprise cross border e commerce means shipping internationally. It can be a challenging endeavor to manage shipping, logistics, and other fulfillment operations. Well, you obviously can not afford to have high shipping costs or long delivery times, as it can affect your global customer base. 

So, how are you planning to streamline global logistics that also offers smooth coordination and optimizes shipping costs? You can opt for eocmmerce solutions that help you integrate with multiple shipping carriers. When you have multiple shipping solutions at hand, you can optimize the costs and ensure smooth order fulfillment. 

StoreHippo comes with a comprehensive shipping solution and the best logistics providers. You can choose to integrate your B2B international ecommerce marketplace with multiple delivery solutions from the 30+ pre-integrated logistics providers on StoreHippo. You can also onboard vendors from different countries and integrate local delivery partners with StoreHippo’s seamless integrations for quick order fulfillment. You can streamline your shipping process with StoreHippo’s built-in logistics management solution. StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce solutions also come with a comprehensive delivery boy management system to help you align your own chain of delivery boys for efficient hyperlocal deliveries in global markets. 

Payment and currency exchange 

B2B cross border ecommerce buisnesses have to deal with multiple currencies and manage exchange rate fluctuations. There can also be various preferences regarding the payment methods and payment gateways by customers from different locations. How are you planning to tackle this situation? You can go with a payment system that supports multiple currencies and allows your customers to make purchases in their local currencies. 

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions come with 60+ pre-integrated domestic and international payment gateways. You can offer your B2B customers the freedom to choose their preferred payment options like COD, card payment, mobile wallets, net banking, etc. StoreHippo international ecommerce marketplace builder also offers support for unlimited currencies used across the world. You can get an IP-based auto-switch to a native currency with the powerful inbuilt location and currency detector from StoreHippo. You do not need to use any additional plugin or app to support multiple currencies as StoreHippo comes with a built-in support for all currency types. 

Conclusion

To navigate the realm of B2B cross border ecommerce, enterprise brands need strategic planning and approach coupled with a deep understanding of the global customer base. Along with the host of advantages of going global, business-to-business brands also need to overcome the hurdles and challenges. Businesses can thrive in the global markets and ace the international ecommerce game with the support of a robust ecommerce platform. 

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions come with 300+ enterprise-grade features to help brands pivot their business to enterprise cross border ecommerce. Brands can build small or large enterprises with global ecommerce solutions from StoreHippo. The host of marketing solutions and comprehensive enterprise-grade features help you overcome all hurdles of international ecommerce and carve a niche for your B2B business in the global market seamlessly. 

Are you all set to create a B2B cross border ecommerce marketplace with StoreHippo? Explore the wide range of features by starting your 14-day free trial now.