Leveraging an extensive background in B2B business development I’ve embarked on a tech venture aimed at streamlining international trade through the power of marketing and process automation. As many corporate managers and business leaders, I’ve been navigating the swift rise in AI deployment, leading me to ponder questions such as:
– how is this new technological advancement going to change the way companies manage their commerce?
– is AI able to disrupt the industry of traditional B2B marketplaces, introducing radical innovations and pushing new trading behaviours among players?
While all this was in my mind, imagining how business matching and trading processes could evolve, I found this interesting article written by Patrick McGovern (4 ways AI will reshape B2B commerce) which advances, by practical cases and observations, some areas where AI is impacting B2B commerce.
According to the author, AI is already playing a tangible role through its effective applications in certain fields, such as:
1. B2B Procurement, with the time-consuming “search and assessment activity” shifting from “browsing catalogues” to AI highly sophisticated and customized recommendations.
2. Trade Credits, improving the capacity to assess partner’s reliability and credit worthiness in the transaction process (in simple terms, enhancing sellers’ understanding and evaluation of their commercial counterparts).
3. Product Data Management, simplifying the classification and reorganization of several items by large and inhomogeneous catalogues and databases. The same AI can further contribute to data standardization and inventory management.
We find these takeaways very interesting, and we would like to go further, combining McGovern’s points with additional considerations brought by TTW developing team and myself.
1. AI BYPASSING B2B MARKETPLACES?
AI can optimize purchasing decisions within B2B marketplaces’ data, not (or not yet) bypassing them. While AI can suggest, group, and compare interesting products over the web coming from different marketplaces or single company’s e-commerce, the outcome may not be accurate and, at the end, might not retrieve all relevant available sources. As a matter of fact, most of data needed for a comprehensive comparison might not be accessible, such as product data sheets. In that, traditional B2B marketplaces shall retain a good market role in optimizing purchasing decisions (an easier move in B2C commerce which is usually rich in product data content Which can be leverage by an AI model to scout). So, as suggested by McGovern, AI can alternatively be effectively employed to empower marketplace internal search engines supporting and optimizing buying processes.
2. AI ASSISTING B2B MARKETPLACE’S DATA MANAGEMENT
This is another highlighted point by McGovern’s analysis. However, while AI tools can help the content management and data import, AI models might significantly improve user experience providing tailored scopes, according to Sellers and Buyers businesses, for data management and usage, streamlining a “choice” of what data to manage into an analysis of possible data-informed decisions.
3. AI EMPOWERING TRADE MARKETING
One of earliest and most evident domain touched by first AI applications is design: image creations, photo retouching, text / copywriting supporting tools are nowadays able to enhance further corporate communication and marketing campaigns.
We believe these tools can be implemented within marketplace platform to help (and improve) data upload and sellers’ profile setup. At the same time AI can support to automate and expedite corporate marketing campaigns, improving the effectiveness of business sales campaigns.
4. AI ACCELERATING MARKET KNOWLEDGE TO IMPROVE SALES CAMPAIGNS’ STRATEGIES
AI applications can find and conveniently reorganize real-time trade statistics and market information able to inform companies on international market trends and business opportunities. Again, some of these data, the most sophisticated ones (like customs statistics) might be not accessible So a hybrid approach would work better: an amalgam of industry-specific data retrieved directly from users and macro-economic data outlooks delivered by AI analysis. Managers will use this output to orient their strategies in setting up their sales campaigns, focusing their actions and allocating their investments.
5. AI SUPPORTING B2B PLAYERS’ TRADE COMPLIANCE AND CREDIT WORTHINESS
Consistent with the above-mentioned McGovern’s analysis, AI applications, together with “Know Your Business” process, can help to retrieve data from multiple sources able to confirm the creditworthiness of one business player (buyer). I use “confirm” and not “assess” because here, again, many financial and credit risk data might be not freely accessible to AI applications, so the latter can be a complementary tool detecting signs of the ongoing business context of the assessed company and its overall solidity and compliance to country’s trade terms.
By these first findings, we believe AI can be a powerful tool enhancing B2B marketplaces capabilities, more than being a threat to their business models or value propositions. By these means, at TradeToWorld we envision a wide application of AI technologies to:
– improve the platform search engine capabilities,
– highly customize users’ experience,
– assist content data management and users’ profile setup (including product photo retouching capabilities, to align product images to the marketplace strict standards),
– help market strategy setups and sales decision-making,
– provide ready-to-go automated sales marketing tools to registered Sellers,
in a flexible context, according to the evolution in the technology and the marketplace’s growth and widening scopes, which can modify our current vision and disclose many more useful applications over the time. In a B2B context, AI and Deep Learning advances seem to open up a path for online marketplaces to become data-driven trade ecosystems that not only allows greater sales opportunities for businesses, but that can drive these businesses throughout the backbone of all trading processes, providing an easier, seamless and, fundamentally, more informed experience of participation in international trade.
Kingsley Borello
Founder and CEO
TradeToWorld Marketplace Corporation
