Overview
Business-to-business (B2B) is not usually associated with e-commerce — but that is a misconception. More and more online shops today are B2B platforms. Selling online makes life easier for both sides: it speeds up communication, reduces the number of people involved, simplifies product management and provides accurate statistics. A major advantage of B2B platforms is the ability to build business relationships across borders, which is often difficult in the offline world. Keep your trade relationships going at any time and take orders automatically around the clock. Another strength of the B2B platform is its integration with the many systems running in your company and warehouse — above all your ERP. Integration with external systems is crucial for the shop administrator: a B2B platform connected to your management system makes work much easier and cuts administration time.
How we build a B2B system
Business analysis
The first step is a business analysis. It reveals the company’s real needs and its organisational structure. We look at the external environment — customers, suppliers and business partners — and at the systems the platform must integrate with, such as ERP, online payments or courier services. The result is a map of the key processes and a clearly defined project scope.
Design
Our top priority in design is close cooperation with the client. Every stage ends with a meeting where we summarise the work done and plan the next steps, taking into account any design questions that have come up. This helps our clients avoid costly mistakes and get a top-quality product with the features they really need. Throughout the project, the client has a dedicated Project Manager who answers questions and advises on the implementation.
Implementation
Once the design is complete, we run the implementation as smoothly as possible, so that training is effective and the full potential of the B2B platform is used as quickly as possible.
Clients get full support from our team during the technical rollout, as well as hands-on training for the staff who will run the system.
Ongoing support and maintenance
After go-live we continuously monitor the system and provide organisational and technical support, including a dedicated Project Manager, software updates, and help whenever problems arise.
When your business grows or you need new features, our team will analyse the requirements and implement new solutions.
Features
Users
- Creating companies (customer accounts)
- Creating users, including multiple users per company
- Assigned sales representative
- User administration:
- blocking / unblocking a company
- blocking / unblocking a user
- Permission management by the customer
- Permissions based on business roles
- Contact form to the administrator
- Automatic account lock after failed login attempts
Customers and trading partners
- Customer profile:
- name, VAT number, company registration numbers
- registered address and delivery addresses
- contact details (e-mail, phone, messengers)
- credit limit
- account balance
- payment schedule
- overdue and upcoming payments
- Customer profile managed by the customer’s own users
- Public registration form
Product catalogue
- Product records
- Adding products:
- master data imported from the ERP into B2B
- enriching product data with additional information
- Publishing products on the website
- Alternative product names
- Product attributes
- Warranty codes
- Barcodes
- Technical description
- Photos
- Additional product files
- Removing products
- Editing the catalogue
- Product search by:
- name
- product code / SKU
- EAN
- part number
- keywords
- Back-in-stock notifications
Bundles
- Bundle = product 1 + product 2 + product 3
- Bundle price
- Bundle SKU
Product comparison
- Products with similar attributes
- Defined comparison criteria, e.g. technical description
Related products
- Customers who bought X also bought Y
- Extended warranty
Stock availability
- Stock levels displayed on the website
- General status: available / unavailable
- “Only n items left”
- Reserved items
Warranties
- Warranty codes
- Warranty period
Price lists
- Price list management:
- new price list
- editing a price list
- bulk price changes
- adding products to a price list
- Price list hierarchy
- Customer-specific prices
- Discount groups (lines)
- Customer-specific discounts
Delivery terms
- Delivery methods
- Delivery costs
- Free delivery (e.g. above a set order value)
Payment terms
- Payment terms
Requests for quotation
- Registering a request for quotation
- Quotation history
Sales orders
- Placing a sales order
- Shopping cart:
- generate a cart from a past invoice
- add a product
- remove a product
- change quantity
- Payment collection (if payment on order is selected)
- Order confirmation
- Invoice generation:
- pro forma invoice
- VAT invoice
- EU invoice
- Order cancellation
- Sales order history
- Order changes by the operator (e.g. delivery cost)
Picking
- Picking orders
- Shipping
Invoicing and e-invoicing
- Duplicate VAT invoices
- Duplicate EU invoices
- Duplicate VAT credit notes
- VAT invoice history per customer
- Payment history
Complaints (RMA)
- Registering a complaint (RMA)
- Complaint status
- Document workflow
- Complaint tracking
- Accepted complaints:
- replacing product X with the same product
- replacing product X with product Y
- refund – VAT credit note
- additional discount – VAT credit note
- Rejected complaints and status changes
- Complaint history
ERP interface
- Customer data (sales and financial settings)
- Sales orders
- Sales invoices
- Deliveries
- Serial numbers
- Stock levels
- Customer balances (invoices due, available credit)
- Sending new orders to the ERP
- Product definitions
Master data sources
- ERP:
- customers (over time customers can also register in B2B and be sent to the ERP)
- customer delivery addresses
- customer balances
- products (basic definition)
- stock levels
- product deliveries
- sales orders placed in the ERP
- invoices
- exchange rates
- B2B:
- B2B users
- product presentation hierarchy
- sales orders placed in B2B
- product pricing policy
- customer pricing policy
- technical and marketing descriptions, photos and files
Find out more about the B2B platform
If in your company:
- taking orders by e-mail and phone is no longer enough,
- order mistakes and complaints are becoming more frequent,
- the number of business customers is growing,
- you are planning to increase sales,
then our B2B platform is the answer to these challenges. Get in touch with our sales team — we’ll be happy to advise you and answer your questions.
