B2B E-Commerce: Beyond Basic Data for ERP Integration

Before we begin, I would like to thank the readers for the amazing response to the previous article 6 Types of Data to Synchronize Between Ecommerce and ERP Systems. And as promised here is the second article on data that can be synchronized (or additional data that can be synchronized) from B2B business's perspective.

There is more to e-commerce and ERP integration than just orders, customers, product, inventory, tier prices, shipping, invoices, and payments. Yes, they are the basic data points that must be synchronized between e-commerce and ERP systems, but depending on the business requirements and your end systems, a lot more information can be synchronized between the two systems - though probably not without customizing one of the two systems.

National accounts

In the B2B scenario, customer information sync takes a different shape altogether. Typically, a B2B customer has multiple users with different privileges. In ERP terminology, B2B accounts are handled as National accounts. They make it easy to define and manage a B2B customer (the organization) as a parent account and then have individual customers within the organization configured as child accounts.

This functionality, by default, is not available in most popular e-commerce solutions and requires customization to support and sync the information from and back to the ERP system. Once customized and integrated, you can leverage the same e-commerce platform for both B2B and B2C customers, provide your B2B customers self-service customer portals, improve resource productivity, and more.

Sales quotation

A sales quote is the first step for most B2B orders. Typically, a lot of back and forth happens over the phone, emails, and in-person before a ...