For Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) brands, success often hinges on more than just the quality of their products. A significant portion of their market presence lies in the "out of home" domain. Whether it's in-store retail experiences, outdoor advertising, or partnerships with merchants (restaurants, cafes & bars) FMCG brands have numerous opportunities to make a lasting impact beyond the confines of consumers' homes. In this blog post, we'll explore strategies and tactics that FMCG brands should employ to digitize their route to market, enhancing their "out of home" presence and drive brand engagement via eB2B platforms.
Choice & Modularity
Composability & Modularity in B2B platforms are crucial, they offers flexibility, scalability, customization, and efficiency, enabling businesses to adapt to their specific needs and evolve with the ever-changing demands of the B2B landscape. It provides a more cost-effective, future-proof, and user-friendly approach to B2B commerce solutions. Enabling FMCG to serve different geographies, market maturities and types of businesses.
Benefits
Deploying an eB2B platform can bring numerous benefits to an FMCG brand. Here are the ones we identified:
Expanded Market Reach: An eB2B platform allows FMCG brands to reach a wider audience, including retailers, distributors, wholesalers, and other business partners, both locally and globally. This can open up new market opportunities and increase brand exposure.
Perfect paging: Brands need to ensure that their digital assets are perfectly displayed online, by integrating their eB2B platform with third party applications (GMB, UberEats & Shopify) it then becomes easier to maintain, modify & display digital assets across B2C platforms to increase sales conversion & keep high standards.
Streamlined Ordering Process: FMCG brands can offer their partners an efficient and automated way to place orders online. This reduces the margin for errors and speeds up the order processing and fulfillment, resulting in improved customer satisfaction.
Real-time Inventory Management: With an eB2B platform, both the FMCG brand and its partners can have real-time visibility into inventory levels. This enables better demand forecasting, reduces the risk of stockouts, and minimizes overstock situations.
Personalized Pricing and Promotions: The platform can provide the capability to offer customized pricing and promotional deals to different partners. This can be based on factors such as order volume, loyalty, or special agreements, enhancing partner relationships.
Data Insights: The platform can collect and analyze data on partner buying behaviors, preferences, and trends. This data can inform better decision-making, allowing FMCG brands to tailor their product offerings and marketing strategies.
Improved Communication: An eB2B platform can facilitate direct and transparent communication between the FMCG brand and its partners. This fosters a stronger business relationship, better customer service, and quicker issue resolution.
Reduced Administrative Costs: Automation of order processing and other routine tasks can significantly reduce administrative overhead. This not only saves time but also lowers operational costs.
Efficient Product Launches: FMCG brands can use the platform to introduce new products and variants more efficiently. Partners can quickly access product information and start ordering, which can lead to faster product launches.
Mobile Accessibility: Mobile-friendly eB2B platforms enable partners to place orders and access information on the go, enhancing convenience and accessibility.
Inventory Forecasting: By analyzing historical sales data and partner orders, FMCG brands can better predict inventory needs, minimize carrying costs, and ensure products are available when needed.
Competitive Advantage: Implementing an eB2B platform can give FMCG brands a competitive edge in the market. Partners often prefer suppliers that offer digital, efficient ordering and relationship management tools.
Scalability: As the brand grows, the eB2B platform can easily scale to accommodate more partners and products, making it a flexible solution for evolving needs.
Cost Savings: While there is an initial investment in developing and maintaining the platform, over time, it can lead to significant cost savings through automation, reduced errors, and improved efficiency.
Reducing Waste: eB2B platforms often lead to stock optimization which automatically leads to reduce waste !
Monetization
The monetization piece is still to be defined. With global presence FMCGs might have to adapt their business models based on market maturities. While we believe these are the 4 business models that we'll see the most around eB2B monetization it sounds clear to us that a combination of them would be the perfect combo.
Subscription Fee: Charge a monthly suscription fee to use the eB2B platform.
Example: Coca Cola serves 5M businesses in LATAM. If they onboard 50% of their merchants on their eB2B platform and charge $99 per merchant per month, that represents $2.97Bn in new revenues per year. (2.5M Merchants * $99 * 12 Months
Transactional Fee: By embedding financial services and charge a % fee on every transaction happening on the platform.
Example: BEES (ABinBev) generated $10B+ in GMV. by charging a 2% fee on each transaction they could generate +/- $200M
Resell Data: Embedding BI tools across the platform to organize & resell data.
Example: Heineken to resell search queries & recent orders to local breweries
Retail Media: Enabling any brands to display promotions & ads for their products.
Example: Nestlé gets paid by Campari to promote Aperol Spritz among its networks.
Network Effects
Alliances are important for FMCG companies when deploying eB2B platforms because they provide opportunities for expanding reach, improving customer experience and reducing costs (marketing, sales & technology). By collaborating with the right partners, FMCG businesses can grow their market share and drive growth in the competitive FMCG industry.
Market Penetration: Alliances can help FMCG companies penetrate markets that may be difficult to access independently. Partnering with local businesses or distributors can provide valuable insights and relationships that facilitate market entry.
Shared Resources: Alliances can lead to cost-sharing and resource pooling. By collaborating with other businesses, FMCG companies can reduce the costs associated with e-commerce platform development, maintenance, and marketing. This can make their platform more cost-effective and competitive.
Cross-Selling Opportunities: Alliances enable FMCG companies to cross-sell their products through partner platforms. For example, if an FMCG company produces snacks, it could form an alliance with a beverage company to offer combined snack and beverage bundles. This can enhance the customer experience and drive increased sales.
Complementary Products: FMCG companies can partner with businesses that offer complementary products or services. This synergy allows them to offer a more comprehensive solution to their customers, making their e-commerce platform more attractive. For instance, a toothpaste manufacturer might form an alliance with a toothbrush manufacturer.
Data & Insights: Partnering with other businesses in an alliance allows FMCG companies to access a broader pool of customer data and insights. This data can be invaluable for market research, customer profiling, and improving the effectiveness of their e-commerce platform.
Supply Chain Efficiency: By forming alliances with suppliers, logistics companies, and distributors, FMCG businesses can optimize their supply chain operations. This can lead to cost savings and improved product availability, both of which are essential for gaining market share.
Winners takes all
While there can be various partners on a platform, there can be only ONE platform per merchant. This is why it is crucial to be among the firsts, while offering the best experience, service & interface.
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