5 types of B2B portals

A business-to-business (B2B) portal is a web or mobile platform that allows you, as a business, to manage your relationships with other businesses, such as your clients, partners, or suppliers. This is in contrast to business-to-consumer (B2C) that refers to a company’s relationship with its customers.

WHAT B2B PORTALS BUSINESSES CAN BUILD TO IMPROVE PROCESSES AND HOW ?

Here are the 5 most common types of B2B portals:

#1 SERVICE PORTAL

This portal collects all the services provided by an organization or group of organizations, both internally and externally. Normally, service portals are run as self-service platforms, where users can raise requests and process transactions. Examples include governmental services, insurance portals, and HR portals (normally used by larger organizations to automate onboarding, leave requests and obtaining certain certification).

Example: 

• Dubai Airport RTA
• Career portal at Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts
• Residents’ portal by for Damac tenants

#2 SUPPLIER PORTAL

This platform allows you to streamline and organize transactions or requests to and from Suppliers. It may have a tendering feature that allows your vendors to bid on your request for quotation (RFQ). Suppliers may register and submit all the required documents, see your requests, obtain the necessary documents, submit their quotations, upload price lists and update the progress of your purchase. It will show all the history of transactions, may send certain notifications, and allow you to update your suppliers with your Terms & Conditions.

Example: 

• Dubai Airport

#3 COMMUNITY PORTAL

If you want to gather people related by interests, needs, location, etc., you may want to allow them to gather in groups. The purpose is to allow users to engage with each other for various purposes, i.e., share knowledge, solve problems, etc. Through this portal, a company may acquire new customers, collect new data, increase brand loyalty by developing your relationship with existing customers.

Example: 

• Sony PlayStation
• Apple Inc. community

#4 PARTNER PORTAL or B2B LOYALTY PORTAL

If you sell via a variety of sales channels, you will benefit from this type of portal. Through this platform, your partners can stay focused on their performance while doing business with you. Such a portal should include transaction history, tiered levels of partnership, enable partner benefits and rewards, offer detailed information about the products and services you provide, feature marketing tools and materials, and allow online certification (if any).

Example: 

• Amazon (AWS)
• DELLEMC

#5 ELEARNING PORTAL

This is a rapidly growing trend in 2021. This portal may be fit into one of the above categories or be a standalone platform. It includes self-learning courses, educational content, tests, quizzes, and online certification. The portal should show the user’s learning path, progress, and achievements. The portal may also have user-generated content – when the users can create and upload educational content in various formats, as well as build their own courses.

Example: 

• Linkedin
• Masterclass
• Coursera

Are you looking to create your very own B2B portal? Whether you want to better manage your relationship with suppliers, put all your services in one place, or build a thriving community, BRIXIO can develop the ideal digital solution. Please get in touch with us and we can start working on your project’s requirements right away.