The challenges of developing an online portal community

B2B has inherent problems from the traditional model, thus in the business environment of globalization and new commercial opportunities open in the online world, different business communities need to have their own collaborative space for commercial transaction and information exchange.

Business Community Management blends technology, business and commercial processes and communication across all business community to integrate the whole supply chain in B2B automation.

Revamping a portal from scratch

Some time ago, the Photonic-Sourcing.com web portal, meant to be an interface between the sellers' offer and buyers' demand, on the photonics components marketplace, needed a brand new look & feel as well as a performing technological platform for communication. This new portal had to bring the offers and buyers in the same database, enabling products' search, saving time, finding new leads and other useful features.

Confronting challenges

Implementing B2B initiatives requires significant investment of time and resources, stressing tight budgets and time frames. Trading partnerships automation reduces B2B communication and long sales cycles, allowing for collaboration opportunities from the early product or service go-to-market stages.

Community enrollment, participants need to find flexibility and options that suit their own business scale and framework.

Answers to challenges

Photonic Sourcing turned to Outsourcing Factory for developing the new portal.

Starting from the need of visibility in the supply chain of Photonic Sourcing products, Outsourcing Factory built a platform for knowledge sharing and commercial trading for the specific business community, removing the bottlenecks and challenges of B2B business development and automating sales and supply cycles.

Based on technologies like PHP, MySQL and Linux the Outsourcing Factory team managed to develop a benchmark in fiber optic and related products trading and a benchmark for niche B2B community management systems.

Find a more detailed presentation of the Photonic Sourcing case study here.

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