Reaching new heights: Scaling e-commerce growth with Allianz Trade pay

In the jungle of global manufacturing, launching your e-commerce channel is only the first step to growth. Scaling e-commerce sales is where the real challenge lies. With only a finite amount of ‘nutrients’ to go around, manufacturers must compete in the same spaces to grow taller.

Canopy Components has an established online shop that’s performing well with their trusted and long-standing buyers. Orders arrive daily and the platform generates steady revenue. But as the business looks to expand online sales, difficulties start to emerge.

Most of Canopy’s long-standing customers buy components weeks before they invoice their own contractors, making deferred payments essential to the way they operate. Because of their strong trading relationships and long credit histories with Canopy, these customers expect payment terms, both online and offline. Now, to scale effectively, Canopy needs to be able to extend similar payment terms widely and quickly to its new e-commerce customers.

Yet the business is constrained by its own limited capacity. Credit checks are slow and manual. New buyers can only be assessed one by one, delaying the approvals process. Canopy is unable to offer payment terms instantly at checkout, causing many new e-commerce customers to abandon their purchases mid-order.

At this stage, there is a clear mismatch between Canopy’s scaling strategy and the pace of its order-to-cash process. While there is clear demand for the company’s products among new e-commerce customers, slow buyer assessments and credit decisions are holding back online growth, making it slow and resource intensive.

To scale more quickly, Canopy needs to make secure credit decisions faster. The company realises it must overhaul its existing systems. Credit checks cannot remain a manual, back-office process – going forward, they need to be automated and embedded in the e-commerce infrastructure.

Canopy decides to integrate Allianz Trade pay into its existing platform. Instead of assessing buyers one by one, it now has a new digital solution that instantly assesses creditworthiness and determines if payment terms can be extended. In addition, it provides Know Your Buyer checks to instantly verify a new buyer’s identity and reduce the risk of buyer fraud. Finally, every approved credit decision is protected by trade credit insurance.

For Canopy’s customers, the e-commerce experience has vastly improved, becoming faster and smoother. They now have the option to pay via invoice at checkout, with payment terms offered instantly, and no approval delays. What once required days of review now happens in seconds. The jungle is still highly competitive, but now the company can scale e-commerce sales faster, knowing Allianz Trade pay is working in the background to manage and secure its growth.

With Allianz Trade pay now in place, Canopy’s e-commerce sales start to accelerate. The company isn’t growing cautiously in the undergrowth anymore. With secure roots, it starts extending its reach up into the jungle in search of growth.  

Canopy decides to expand its online offering to new territories to acquire more e-commerce customers. Offering payment terms has now become a strategic advantage rather than a risk. Because credit decisions and approvals are instant, the company can promote deferred payments to new customers knowing that cash flow is protected.

The impact is felt across the business straight away. Uninhibited by manual checks and slow processes, Canopy’s teams can now spend more time focused on customers and account growth. Crucially, the increasing scale doesn’t damage the company’s performance. Any unpaid invoices are insured, and cash flow becomes more predictable – not less – as sales volumes increase.

The next phase of automation sees Allianz Trade pay help streamline the entire order-to-cash process, with payment links issued to customers when invoices are due, reminders triggered automatically, and cash reconciliation integrated into the company’s systems. Canopy can now spend even less time chasing invoices and more time on performance analysis, growth forecasting, and strategic decision-making.

Canopy’s journey shows that scaling e-commerce sales isn’t just about competing for customers or adding new B2B channels. It’s more about building the right foundations for growth with the right tools.

Using Allianz Trade pay, Canopy transformed its online shop, moving from manual credit checks and slow approvals to seamless customer journeys with automated, real-time credit decisions, and insurance protection baked in.

For B2B e-commerce sellers today, you need to couple speed with security to sustain growth over the long-term. With Allianz Trade pay, you’re neither standing still nor taking reckless risks – you’re growing taller through the jungle, steadily and strategically.