Advanced B2B App Ideas To Develop in 2023-25

Ihor Polych

CEO at Devlight

Liubomyr Miller

Delivery Director

Having a mobile app for your business, no matter how small, can give you an edge over the competition. B2B app ideas possess a big potential and serve as a profitable option to monetize your entrepreneurial urge. Do you think of developing an app from the B2B niche that will differentiate your business from those of your competitors and increase customer satisfaction? Then our ideas will definitely come in handy.

Most Common Types Of B2B App Ideas (With Examples)

B2B stands for “Business to business” — this abbreviation for the marketing term defines the process of exchanging goods and services between companies, not including their end client. In other words, it is when one company develops products for another company, so the second is the client of the first. Regular customers will benefit from using the end product of this cooperation. For you to better understand this sphere of software development, we have identified several types of such apps and the most common B2B app examples.

E-commerce Apps

They resemble B2C e-commerce apps, offering the same services for companies rather than individual end clients. It can be a database app with an extensive catalog of suppliers, directly linking suppliers and buyers (retailers) worldwide. We are also talking about applications that offer conditions for finding suppliers, both in the case of long-established brands and for small businesses.

• Examples: Alibaba (a marketplace for intermediary suppliers).

External Management

A successful B2B mobile app for external management is used to speed up task assignment, handle the processes that go beyond the team, and involves third parties in the workflow. Those are convenient platforms for document distribution, task management, and progress tracking. You can customize their interface and data access levels depending on the user’s role.

• Examples: Jira (project management and tracking solution) and Zoom (an online platform for shared video conferences).

Internal Operations

These are apps for complex automation, warehouse logistics, and supply chain tracking. Flexibly customizable for the specifics of any enterprise, their functionality allows you to optimize processes and solve the main problems that are relevant to your company. 

• Examples: Monday (cloud-based project management platform), Slack (collaboration and team interaction software solution).

Work Process Facilitation

These are all the tools your team can use to make the workflow quicker and more productive. The preferred list of tools will differ from one business field to another. For example, online accounting systems for entrepreneurs and small businesses are necessary in field of wholesale trade and the provision of services. Also designed to maintain a database of counterparties, such mobile app business ideas allow you to facilitate each step of the work process and generate all necessary documents:

1. Electronic invoices
2. Electronic supply contracts
3. Electronic checks
4. Automatically generated accounting entries
5. Logistics reports
6. Statistics on changes in income and other indicators

• Examples: CloudShop (a single information space for working with contractors and clients), Subtotal (functional warehouse automation and accounting system).

14 Top B2B App Ideas

Various management apps designed to automate small and medium-sized businesses or software that helps you manage sales and purchases. Apps used to control mutual settlements and work with the client base. Programs for keeping inventory records and printing documents — all of these are B2B app ideas. Here are some more specific ones that you can use for inspiration:

• Business Management Apps

This app should allow the client to work with statistical data. Think about methods for integrating the following in-demand B2B market tools:

1. Integration with accounting and logistics programs
2. Integration of the warehouse system. The system reflects not only the remaining stocks but also what products are popular with customers
3. Team management and salaries
4. Overall business plan and real-time progress
5. Transparency of document flow

• B2B E-commerce App

Marketplaces offer small businesses the easiest launch and fastest scaling. Agree that using the existing infrastructure for a young project is much easier than building your digital presence from scratch. B2B e-commerce apps are a valuable offer for companies or developers looking for a niche to start their business or even to test hypotheses for a product without having a strong brand.

• Product Supply App

Creating a system of relationships and interactions with suppliers will always be among B2B app ideas. Working with the database of suppliers should allow the user to automatically select applicants according to the purchasing department’s own criteria (financial indicators, industry and project experience, company age), without resorting to manually reviewing each application.

• Mes (Manufacturing Execution System) App

MES strives to improve the client’s experience of tracking the manufacturing processes. How about creating a mobile application that helps the worker instantly receive the production task and the necessary information, marks the completion, and communicates with the entire production system? Meanwhile, the manager sees any employee’s entire production process at any site. 

• Warehouse Management System App

Such B2B app ideas help to arrange the work of the warehouse to avoid losses and increase the profit of the enterprise. Control the receipt, movement within the warehouse, the disposal of goods, and payment for it. The warehouse accounting program will make it possible always to be aware of how many goods are in a client’s warehouse and what needs to be purchased.

• Logistics Apps

You may also create the service used for automating the process of delivering and ordering goods. This system makes it easier to enter contact details, automate communications, and schedule deliveries. The service allows you to create a single database of up-to-date and structured information about goods. All goods suppliers and optimal routes in a single service interface with current balances, prices, and control of order execution.

• Team Management Apps

All business ideas have people behind them. Thus, team management apps will always be in demand. Allow a B2B client to create additional accounts, access team chat, and conduct a full-fledged market analysis in one app. In practice, this should be a virtual mini-office.

• Document Sharing App

This app aims to automate routine processes and save time. Automatic distribution of letters with requests for the provision of documents, report generation, and changes in real-time will be useful features. Instant loading and document editing tools should be a must. A large number of editable forms and document templates will also be a plus.

• Project Management App

Project management apps should allow business owners to access, create tasks, assign roles, and follow the project’s progress. Working files that are always at hand with inside chat and video call features will be necessary for workflow facilitation.

• Security App

For B2B sellers not to be afraid to use electronic document management, a business plan system, and other functions that require the use of corporate data, they must be confident in the application’s security.

For this purpose, you can develop a high-security app aiming at data protection. This can be an authenticator app, the app that monitors the warehouse, or stores encoded files. Here are modern options for protecting the personal account of the B2B seller:

1. Levels of access to the information within the account
2. Facial biometrics
3. Electronic signature
4. Voice confirmation

• E-Invoicing

Suppose you left the office and the accounting department urgently needed your signature on a new supplier invoice. In that case, you can use an application that allows you to scan, edit, sign, and send documents. Electronic invoices and document requests are technologies with great potential for implementation in your successful B2B mobile app.

• Mental Health Apps for Employees

Sustainable business owners invest in retaining their talents, and mental health tracking is one of the most tangible trends in this niche. Predictive analytics helps to identify mental health problems long before they reach serious proportions. 

• Offline & Online Activity Merging Apps

How about creating an online system for recording sales, goods, and offline customer experience? Such an app allows clients to quickly carry out basic trading operations — selling, purchasing, returning, and downloading goods or balances from Excel spreadsheets and tracking warehouse and other offline operations. 

• Calculator App

Allows work with customers and suppliers, carry out joint work of employees, control costs, and calculate profit and cost. A calculator app should help clients to control the amount of money at the cash desk, sales, returns, average bills, and markup.

Why Should You Create a B2B App?

Of course, your competitors are probably evaluating these or similar mobile app business ideas and are preparing to develop them or have already taken the plunge. Why should you still consider developing a B2B app?

1. B2B applications are used for various purposes, from finding leads to tracking sales.
2. If you’re in B2C (Business to Consumer), you will need a B2B app at some point in your project’s scaling. 
3. Whether you are planning a public online marketplace, a home building with online private shopping, or an e-buying center for your corporate website, your company will benefit from efficient e-commerce that reduces costs for buyers and suppliers and brings value to your organization.
4. The B2B application can also organize your internal processes so that you can better meet customer needs.
5. With today’s cost-effective business-to-business e-commerce solutions, access to information becomes easier and faster. 
6. A fully flexible B2B e-commerce environment allows site operators to have full control over product content and management, inventory, order fulfillment, and delivery.

Advantages of B2B App Ideas

Compared with a B2C app, a B2B app’s functional design is usually clearer and more understandable. Since this software is designed to solve specific problems, it means that iOS and Android developers have a clear understanding of the purpose and requirements of the application, so they can develop specific functions in demand and ensure continuous improvement. 

Business-to-Business aims to simplify business operations and make them more reachable for the client, ease the workflow, and optimize business processes, thus offering a competitive advantage. Such an app

• Enables scalability;
• Offers improved loyalty and customer engagement;
• Facilitates communication and business operations;
• Provides increased revenue.

B2B vs B2C App Ideas Comparison

B2C refers to an application developed by an enterprise (Business) for a consumer. According to RiskIQ Report, there are 900 million applications in Google Play. Mainly for the end user (end consumer). Thus, the applications that most of us use every day are mainly B2C applications. This kind of application’s main purpose is to meet consumers’ needs and expectations.

There are differences in design, implementation, and feature sets between B2B and B2C applications:

• Goal: developing a B2B application is more suitable for businesses solving specific market problems, while a B2C app aims to encourage networking, provide entertainment, and produce or share content.
• Cost: B2C mobile app development is usually many times cheaper than that of B2B apps.
• Target audience: B2B apps cater to a smaller circle of clients, while B2C ones are more massive and large-scale. 
• UX & UI: Customer experience and user interface form the base of B2C because they aim to attract multiple users. B2B apps are stricter and simpler looking.
• Customer acquisition: B2C apps put an emphasis on the emotionality of their audience and try to encourage it, by all means, to get them involved for longer.
• Business models: B2B apps use a subscription-based model while the B2C often sticks to the freemium approach — downloading and using the primary version of the app is free but all advanced features cost money. However, ads help B2C apps monetize all users’ experiences while B2B’s usually are ad-free. 

A B2B app is more focused on the development of each potential customer because the audience is small, so it needs to be promoted through exhibitions, professional magazines, or the Internet, so the potential sales costs are much higher than B2C. But as long as you find your stable target audience, a successful B2B mobile app will offer faster revenue than B2C, and the return on investment will also be proportional.

How to Build а Successful B2B Mobile App in 9 Steps?

Before you actually start building a mobile app, your company or business will need an app strategy. More than just creating an application is required. The development scenario consists of many predictable steps with various unpredictable circumstances.

Idea Acceleration

A good idea is the basis for a good application. If you still need an idea, take a look around: there is probably a problem in the market that you can develop the right application to solve. Try to identify the source of the problem and why it still needs to be fixed. Gather data and your team — brainstorm collectively, and if you have enough development resources, get down to business.

Product Discovery for B2B App Ideas

The discovery phase of the product development process is a phase of gathering information that provides an understanding of the industry for which the product is being developed, your business, and the target audience. This stage is devoted to collecting user feedback and studying end-user pain points related to the product. Product discovery usually includes:

• Discussing the existing business processes or future startup concept, expectations, and wishes regarding the deadlines;
• Target audience analysis;
• Competitive market analysis (direct and indirect competitors);
• Offering pain point solutions;
• Determining the scope of work;
• Marking deadlines and setting priorities dictated by the market trends and project complexity;
• Schematic role distribution.

App Marketing Strategy Setup

For you to decide on the necessary functions, we recommend using the user journey map — with a step-by-step description of everything that happens in the application. From the first opening to the completion of the target action. To recreate a journey map, try putting yourself in the shoes of a user who just downloaded the app and opened it for the first time. 

Study the target audience but be ready to change the marketing strategy because your client base is not a phenomenon developing a vacuum but an entity that can change. Our advice is to be ready to change the direction initially set by the most popular mobile app business ideas, adapting to the new reality.

UX/UI Design and B2B App Examples

The design should be done at the highest level — with cool visualization and well-thought-out logic. A raw, unfinished interface will only frustrate users — and this is clearly different from what you need at the MVP stage, right? If you have done a good job with the user journey map, you will notice that an advanced B2B app includes many different features. How to implement everything without confusing anyone? Invest in quality UI/UX design right from the start.

Software Development

At this stage, the ideas of the team and designers are brought to life. The QA team or project manager is responsible for checking the results of the team and monitoring the even workload of developers at each stage. Developers must clearly understand the concept of the application and its specifics. Some of the features may still need to be claimed.

Generating Analytic Map to Get Real B2B App Ideas Data

The functionality of the application must correspond to the declared. Entrust the assessment of the usability of the application and its functions to the QA team of the contractor or hired specialists who will:

• Create an app performance analytic map;
• Create user flow analytics map (Determine analytics tool);
• Add marketing analytics for the app to track sources, funnels, etc;
• Study the process of handling data privacy of mobile app users.

Tech-savvy users can identify potential application problems by seeing the product for the first time.

A high-performance application must cope with all operations quickly. Usually, this characteristic is checked later, but monitoring the application’s reaction is necessary now and get inspired by the best B2B app examples.

Release

Designers should once again make sure that the visual matches the style guide. This is another great reason to work with companies that develop mobile applications inside and out, like Devlight. Apart from that, release may include the next types of app testing:

• Regression Testing — previously tested code is checked for fixed errors or errors that arose due to these corrections. At this stage, you can connect the QA team with checklists of code modifications for each sprint.
• Platform Testing — observe the behavior of the application on smartphone screens with different resolutions and on all possible OS versions.
• Acceptance User Testing — trust your application testing to your potential audience.

An application is only ready to be released to the market if it has successfully passed the previous tests.

Product Post-Launch

After the publication in stores, work on the application continues. Regular monitoring of various trending mobile app business ideas will help you in further work and scaling. Actions you should make to ensure continuous improvement:

• Create A/B tests;
• Track app progress & success through daily, weekly, and monthly data report;
• Analyze customer engagement with product;
• Measure the Customer Acquisition Cost vs. CLV ( customer lifetime value);
• Collect & analyze first users’ feedback and comments. Run live feedback sessions to define areas of improvement.

Libraries, which store data about the user’s actions at the time of the crash, on which device it happened, and so on, will help in monitoring app crashes. Sending a crash notification can be sewn into the structure of the application and sorted afterward.

Product Scale

A mobile application must comply with current software, be updated promptly, and apply bug fixes to the application itself. The purpose of support monitoring is to understand your next steps. Use statistics and feedback to identify weaknesses, go back, and strengthen them. It will later help you boost app retention and revenue and build loyalty and awareness. The mobile app development process is extremely dynamic, and to stay afloat, the work on the app must be non-stop.

B2B App Ideas: Summary

Mobile apps are more than just marketing tools. Their use extends far beyond marketing gimmicks. Mobile app business ideas facilitate or add value to helping the customer create a positive perception of your business, and this leads directly to higher profits or economic impact.

Having an app is a sign that your company or business is up to date with the latest trends, and it gives consumers a means to interact with your company or business (thus adding tangible value to them). This leads directly to increased sales and a better customer experience. So, B2B ideas are in the air — you just need to choose yours and start developing.