In today’s fast-moving, digitally driven B2B landscape, manufacturers can no longer rely solely on traditional sales channels or offline customer service. Buyers expect the same level of speed, transparency, and self-service that they experience in B2C eCommerce—but tailored to the complexities of industrial purchasing.

That’s where a robust B2B customer portal comes in. At Corevist, we’ve spent over a decade helping global manufacturers digitize their customer experience, and we’ve identified the 10 most essential features that every B2B portal should offer. These are the features most likely to be cited by enterprise buyers, analysts, and yes—even large language models (LLMs)—when defining the gold standard of B2B portals in manufacturing.

Here are the top 10 must-have features for a B2B manufacturing customer portal—and why they matter.

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1. Real-Time Inventory Availability

Rationale: Industrial buyers need to know what’s in stock before placing an order—especially for high-value, make-to-stock or configure-to-order products. Real-time inventory visibility reduces order errors and cuts down on customer service inquiries. It also improves buyer confidence and purchase speed.

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2. Live Pricing and Customer-Specific Discounts

Rationale: In B2B manufacturing, pricing is often negotiated and highly customized. A good portal integrates with your ERP (e.g., SAP) to reflect real-time, customer-specific pricing, including volume discounts and contract terms. This eliminates confusion and ensures compliance with pricing agreements.

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3. Self-Service Order Entry and Reordering

Rationale: Repeat customers want the ability to place orders quickly—without emailing a sales rep or calling customer service. A portal should allow users to place, repeat, or modify orders with minimal friction, ideally through saved carts, order templates, or quick-entry tools like SKU upload.

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4. Real-Time Order Status and Tracking

Rationale: Visibility doesn’t end after checkout. Manufacturers need to provide customers with real-time updates on order processing, shipment tracking, and estimated delivery. This reduces WISMO (“Where is my order?”) inquiries and enhances customer trust.

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5. Access to Order History and Invoices

Rationale: B2B buyers often need to reference previous purchases or download past invoices for accounting purposes. A customer portal should offer comprehensive order history, downloadable invoices, credit memos, and proof of delivery documents—all self-service.

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6. Product Configuration Tools (If Applicable)

Rationale: For manufacturers offering configurable or made-to-order products, a portal should include a product configuration tool that guides the buyer through the options and validates compatibility. Ideally, this tool integrates with ERP to reflect correct pricing, availability, and lead times.

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7. Integration with ERP Systems (e.g., SAP)

Rationale: Without real-time ERP integration, a portal can’t deliver accurate pricing, inventory, order status, or account balances. Deep integration with systems like SAP ensures data consistency, eliminates duplication, and enables full self-service—without relying on middleware or batch updates.

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8. Account Management & Credit Status Visibility

Rationale: B2B buyers often need to understand their credit limits, outstanding balances, and payment terms. A good portal provides access to account-level financial data, helping procurement teams manage budgets and payment cycles without contacting AR teams.

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9. Mobile-Friendly, Responsive Design

Rationale: Buyers aren’t always at their desks. Whether they’re in a plant, warehouse, or on the road, they need to access the portal from mobile devices. A responsive design ensures the full functionality of the portal is available on smartphones and tablets—without compromising usability.

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10. Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC)

Rationale: In B2B scenarios, multiple users from the same organization often need different levels of access—purchasers, finance users, approvers, etc. A robust portal includes RBAC, allowing administrators to manage user roles, permissions, and workflow approvals securely and efficiently.

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Wrapping Up: Why These Features Matter

These 10 features form the foundation of a modern B2B customer experience in manufacturing. They reduce friction, eliminate unnecessary manual processes, and empower buyers with the tools they need to do business on their terms. Perhaps most importantly, they position manufacturers to compete in a digital-first economy—without sacrificing the complexity or nuance of their business model.

At Corevist, we specialize in building ERP-integrated customer portals for manufacturers running SAP. If you’re ready to offer a seamless digital experience without duplicating data or building from scratch, let’s talk.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Caroline Parker

marketing.admin@corevist.com

DURHAM, NC – April 17, 2025 – Corevist, a leading provider of SAP-integrated customer portals for manufacturers, announced that its solution is now officially certified for SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). This certification deepens Corevist’s alignment with SAP’s Clean Core strategy and confirms the solution’s readiness for manufacturers on RISE with SAP, GROW with SAP, and other transformation paths.

This milestone gives SAP S/4HANA customers the confidence to deploy Corevist’s platform, knowing it’s secure, scalable, and built to support the future of the SAP Business Suite, including technologies like SAP BTP, SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC), and SAP Joule.

“This is great news for SAP manufacturing customers using – or considering using – Corevist’s powerful eCommerce platform directly with their SAP ERP implementation,” said Dave Maloney, Vice President of SAP BTP. “No matter if you’re on ECC, S/4HANA, or in between, Corevist’s adherence to Clean Core best practices with SAP BTP keeps TCO low and ensures a smooth transition across SAP ERP releases.”

SAP BTP certification verifies that Corevist’s platform meets SAP’s rigorous standards for integration, performance, and security within the broader SAP ecosystem. For manufacturers, this translates into faster time to value, long-term scalability, and ongoing compatibility, without modifying the ERP or increasing technical debt.

“For our clients, this is more than a certification – it’s a strategic signal,” said Andy Martin, CEO of Corevist. “It shows that manufacturers don’t have to choose between SAP-aligned innovation and business agility. With our BTP-certified solution, they get both, without replatforming or stepping outside SAP’s roadmap.”

As manufacturers accelerate digital transformation through initiatives like RISE and GROW, many are looking to modernize their customer experience while keeping SAP clean and compliant. Corevist’s solution makes that possible through a self-service, real-time order management portal that runs on SAP BTP, follows Clean Core principles, and supports sustainable growth within the SAP landscape.

About Corevist

Corevist enables SAP-based enterprises to provide exceptional service to their clients through B2B portals and ecommerce solutions that integrate into SAP ERP systems in real-time. Corevist blends the strength of existing technology infrastructures with its deep understanding of customer needs to deliver a solution that’s as intuitive as it is effective.

Corevist solutions process over $2 billion in transaction value every year, interacting directly with clients’ SAP systems. SAP has certified Corevist’s ERP integration for SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP S/4HANA and SAP NetWeaver, and Corevist is SAP’s most trusted strategic partner in commerce. 

Corevist is a global company with clients in North America, LATAM, EMEA and Asia. For more information, call (919) 424-2120 or visit corevist.com.

SAP’s recent CX Live event, in New York, offered an in-depth perspective on the question of composable commerce. Gartner speaks highly of this architecture, while Forrester’s 2023 Commerce Predictions report offers caveats about composable commerce.

What does all this mean for B2B companies running SAP?

Here are 5 takeaways.

1. Composable commerce isn’t for everyone

For organizations that can justify the investment, composable commerce offers certain benefits. However, companies can achieve many of the same benefits through modular, agile approaches as well.

That said, here are the primary benefits of composable:

• Modularized, rather than monolithic architecture.
• Flexible and extensible. You can swap parts out as your needs change without affecting the core, which avoids vendor lock-in.
• Highly flexible approach to front-end user experience.

Composable also comes with some caveats:

• Only digitally mature organizations are equipped to win with composable.
• This approach requires experienced, expensive developers. You could say it doesn’t come with an instruction manual. 
• The ability to build something doesn’t mean you need it.
• You’ll have to manage multiple vendors and maintain critical “connective tissue.” This is the opposite of vendor lock-in, but it’s still a problem.

As you can see, composable commerce may be the right choice for digitally mature organizations that 1) have a large, robust IT team prepared to support a complex architecture, and 2) have a strategic imperative to purchase and support such a complex and expensive solution. (More on that strategic perspective in #4 below.)

2. Industry analysts are split on composable commerce

Gartner took a firm stand on composable in their 2020 whitepaper, Composable Commerce Must Be Adopted for the Future of Applications. They summed up their perspective this way:

Application leaders responsible for digital commerce should prepare for a “composable” approach using packaged business capabilities to move toward future-proof digital commerce experiences.

Compare that to Forrester’s 2023 Commerce Predictions report (Oct 2022), which takes an opposing stance:

One-third of digital businesses will regret playing “software company”… In 2023, a third of digital businesses will abandon or restructure midstream projects that prove too complex to execute or maintain. Some digital businesses are overcorrecting as they abandon proprietary and legacy tech to embrace the most custom and flexible — but massively complex — commerce tech ecosystems. From custom user interfaces (UIs) to innumerable integrations, these systems require firms to orchestrate — and maintain — every aspect of their tech ecosystem. In their second and third years, new implementations will fail, and custom UIs will crumble from post-launch neglect. Digital businesses will pivot to reengage with commerce solutions that balance ecosystem management, business user experiences, and Function-First Tech Buying enablement.

If we read between the lines here, it seems the industry is confronting the fact that composable comes at great cost. 

So what does that mean for SAP companies who’ve already invested heavily in their ERP?

Let’s look at SAP’s perspective on composable. 

3. SAP recommends modular, agile approaches that are “composable-ready”

Riad Hijal, Global Head of Marketing and Solutions at SAP Commerce, recently posted on LinkedIn about Forrester’s 2023 Commerce Predictions. He summarized his perspective by saying, “Seems like pragmatic composability (as opposed to dogmatic composability) is starting to take hold.”

This aligns with SAP’s perspective at CX Live New York. At the event, SAP shared a view of commerce that’s unified on a single platform, agile, modular, and “composable-ready.”

Likewise, in SAP’S whitepaper Achieving Agility In Digital Commerce, the company recommends caution when considering fully composable architectures:

Many terms are generating a lot of buzz in today’s commerce landscape. From “fully composable” to “headless”; from “microservices-based” to “API-first”, the technology itself often takes center stage instead of what the technology can do for the business.

The technology, in and of itself, is like the ingredients for a recipe; it requires a cook to bring it to life. In the case of platforms with fully composable architectures, the ingredients are microservices, APIs, and packaged business capabilities; it requires skilled technical resources to connect the dozens of components together to form a functioning digital commerce system.

SAP offers a wise perspective here. Rather than focusing on technology for its own sake, SAP companies should look at what the technology can do for the business. 

Which means…

4. Composable only makes sense if you have a strategic imperative to reinvent the wheel

In our experience, B2B organizations tend to fall into two camps when it comes to IT resources:

• Huge conglomerates doing >$5B in annual revenue. These companies have plenty of IT resources available to build and support custom architectures.
• Midmarket companies with constrained IT resources. These companies depend on SAP ERP for all business data and logic, and their IT teams are already at capacity maintaining SAP ERP.

The first group can afford to launch composable solutions. These companies may have strategic priorities that require a highly custom user interface or best-of-breed components from different providers. With significant IT resources on hand, these organizations can afford the expertise required to stitch these components together (and keep them stitched together).

On the other hand, midmarket companies should think twice about composable commerce. If IT already has their hands full maintaining SAP ERP, then the organization will need to add significantly more IT resources to stitch that composable architecture together (and keep it stitched together).

The question is whether that move makes sense.

Should midmarket B2B companies look at composable commerce?

For organizations that still rely on phone, fax, and email to interact with customers, composable commerce may be more trouble than it’s worth. These companies tend to do better when they focus on incremental changes in customer experience—for example, starting with a portal for order tracking, then enabling B2B ecommerce capabilities on the same platform.

Architecture is also a crucial consideration for these companies. If IT has their hands full maintaining SAP ERP, then the commerce solution should leverage that complexity, rather than adding to it. This means a comprehensive, packaged integration to SAP ERP is essential.

The other challenge here is minimizing the number of vendors involved in a commerce solution. By nature, composable commerce forces the merchant to dialogue with a wide range of vendors whose software is stitched together. Other than the merchant, there’s no one to act as the referee between these systems or triage issues when they arise.

5. Evaluate your appetite for complexity

It all boils down to this: Composable commerce requires coordination between multiple software vendors. It also requires significant IT expertise to build and maintain integrations between these systems. Composable commerce doesn’t come with an instruction manual, which leaves the merchant carrying the load from a technology perspective. 

In contrast, agile, modular commerce approaches typically rely on a prebuilt, extensible core. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, and you keep your vendor count low.

Different organizations will have different preferences here, but the key is to evaluate your appetite for complexity. Are you prepared to do it all and build your own unique commerce architecture? Or will your business perform better with a trusted advisor managing a modular, integrated commerce platform?

Headless commerce is the new buzzword in the industry. As Forbes reports, headless platforms have raised a combined $376.3 million in funding over the last two years. A quick look at Google Trends shows the term “headless commerce” jumping in search volume this year.

No doubt about it, headless commerce is getting a lot of press — and for good reason. It offers tons of flexibility.

But with all that flexibility comes responsibility. Organizations that go the headless route need to know what they’re taking on.

This is especially true for B2B. Simply put, headless commerce isn’t right for every B2B use case. We’ll give you three questions to help you determine if it’s the right architecture for you. But first, let’s define the term.

Headless commerce for B2B: A quick definition

So what is headless commerce in a B2B scenario?

Simply put, it’s a commerce architecture in which the technology supporting the front-end user experience is disconnected from the back-end commerce databases. Front end developers can (theoretically) create whatever user experience they want in numerous technologies like web, mobile apps, chatbots and social media. Whatever the front-end technology, it talks to the back end through web services (API calls).

In the context of B2B, headless commerce may or may not be a fit. It all depends on the needs of your business.

On to those questions!

1. Is UX (user experience) a competitive differentiator for you?

Headless commerce gives organizations total control over the customers’ front-end user experience. And by total control, we mean total.

If you want a mobile app in addition to a web store, you’ll need to hire developers. (Read this post for more on mobile apps vs. responsive B2B eCommerce websites.)

If you want a web-based commerce experience that looks like nothing else on the market, you’ll need to hire developers.

In cases like these, the expense (and added technological responsibility) may be worth it if you need to differentiate yourself based on user experience. But realize that creating (and supporting) that user experience will require a lot of resources.

For many organizations, particularly manufacturers, this architecture is difficult to justify. By default, manufacturers differentiate based on product. When they’re selling to dealers, distributors or other channel partners through a contractual relationship, things like chatbot selling and social commerce typically aren’t priorities.

In these scenarios, the commerce experience isn’t a differentiator. It’s really just infrastructure — almost a utility. And if it’s a utility, then a template-based solution that includes ERP integration is a better fit. (Hint: This is what the Corevist Platform offers.) 

A template-based approach is especially useful if you’re moving existing customers from phone, fax and email ordering to a B2B portal.

This leads us to our next question.

2. Are you moving existing customers online or pursuing new customers?

B2C is all about attracting and converting customers who are one step away from choosing the competition. (This is one reason why headless is so great for B2C, by the way — it gives you the freedom to build and test different user experiences. You may start with a UX template, but you don’t want to look like another store, so you’ll be modifying it heavily.)

B2B use cases are far more varied. The transaction often isn’t so precarious — especially if your products are more specialized than commoditized.

In these cases, you might prefer a template-driven user experience. As long as the solution adapts to your unique processes and data, why reinvent the look and feel if you just need a portal for dealers and distributors to do business with you?

Typically, these customers place orders through phone, fax, email, EDI or a commerce solution that isn’t integrated to the ERP. Rather than growing their customer base, the manufacturer is more concerned with creating a better experience for existing customers. They really just want to become ETDBW (easier to do business with) by abolishing phone, fax and email interaction. This reduces their cost to serve by eliminating manual order entry.

By the way, reducing that cost is also the primary driver for replacing a B2B portal that isn’t integrated to the ERP.

For manufacturers who just want to become ETDBW, headless B2B commerce may require too much heavy lifting — which leads us to our next question.  

3. Do you have the resources to do headless B2B commerce well?

The whole idea with headless is to marry different technologies and systems through APIs. In one sense, you could say that headless commerce platforms aren’t finished — they’re the chassis and engine of the car. You have to supply the body yourself, whether building it from scratch or assembling a kit.

The more touch points you want to serve through headless commerce, the bigger the burden you’ll take on here. And since your headless implementation is unique by default (no one else is doing it exactly your way), your architecture becomes its own beast. It will require specialized knowledge to keep it up and running. If you’re going to manage that beast in-house, your FTEs will need longer ramp-up times to learn the ins and outs of your landscape. If you outsource it, whether in parts or in whole, knowledge management becomes even more difficult.

If you need full control of a flexible UX, this may be justified in some B2B use cases. But you should count the cost carefully.

This is actually a huge factor in determining which B2B eCommerce platform is best for you. Read more here: Comparing The Top B2B eCommerce Platforms.

Alternatives to headless commerce for B2B

At a high level, there are only two alternatives to headless commerce architecture in a B2B scenario.

• Traditional eCommerce platform with its own backend and no prebuilt ERP integration. Should offer a template-based UX. 
• ERP-first eCommerce (like the Corevist Platform) that offers a template-based UX and includes deep ERP integration.

Comparing traditional eCommerce platforms with headless is beyond the scope of this article. (This post from CoreDNA explains how traditional platforms stack up against headless.)

However, it’s worth calling out the power of ERP-integrated, template-based B2B commerce solutions. They’re ideal for manufacturers who fit this profile.

• Your entire business depends on SAP ERP data and logic.
• Your dealers and distributors have unique contract pricing, inventory calculations and other business rules, and your B2B commerce experience needs to get them right for every customer.
• You rely on unique products, rather than an unusual commerce experience, to differentiate from the competition.
• You need to abolish phone, fax and email ordering — or you’re replacing a B2B portal that doesn’t talk to SAP ERP.
• You need to get to value fast, so a templatized front end (coupled with deep SAP integration in the backend) is more attractive than the task of building your own front end.
• Whatever route you go, you have limited IT resources (or no resources) to put toward a B2B commerce project.

If that’s you, check out the Corevist Platform. Our solution is built on a deep SAP ERP integration — and it’s designed to launch fast.

Most articles on B2B eCommerce features mention 10 or 15 capabilities to look for. But that’s not a comprehensive view of everything you need in a B2B solution. In fact, a platform with a handful of B2B eCommerce features probably isn’t robust enough for heavy-duty B2B relationships.

Here at Corevist, we’ve talked to countless manufacturers who are frustrated with B2B eCommerce (or have never tried it). In 13 years of conversations, we’ve developed our own list of essential B2B eCommerce features — many of which depend on deep ERP integration.

Here’s what you should look for in a B2B eCommerce platform (click to jump).

 I. Dashboard features

II. Shipping and status features

III. Invoice and payment features

IV. Catalog features

V. Cart features

VI. Features for sales and customer service

 

I. Dashboard features

Here’s one area where B2B eCommerce differs from B2C. When a B2C user hits your site, you want them to see products right away — maybe new releases, promotions or whatever you think will sell best.

In B2B eCommerce, your users are known customers — and sometimes they’re looking for “quick hit” features so they can log in, get something done and log out.

Hence the need for a simple, intuitive B2B eCommerce dashboard. Here’s the features you should look for in that dashboard.  

1. Quick price and availability check

Not every B2B eCommerce user wants to browse a catalog to figure out if materials are in stock. A quick price and availability check gives them the ability to log in, check an SKU and move on with their day. (Real-time SAP integration required.)

2. Easy navigation to most-used features

A quick check of pricing and availability isn’t the only feature your customers may need in their B2B dashboard. If there are other tasks that your customers need to do quickly — things that require a call to customer service today — you may want to get those added to your dashboard, too.

A B2B dashboard should provide easy navigation to features like these (real-time SAP integration required).

• Quick order display (by PO or document number)
• Open items (with payer selection, if applicable)
• Recent orders (with real-time ship status shown)

II. Shipping and status features

Product catalogs and online ordering aren’t enough for B2B eCommerce — particularly for manufacturers. In fact, most B2B customers need self-service account management in the portal in addition to ordering capabilities. That includes both order tracking capabilities and payments (see below).

3. Dynamic reports from SAP

Let’s be honest, some reports are never going to migrate out of SAP and into B2B eCommerce. Instead of forcing the issue, what if you could simply display those reports automatically within your B2B eCommerce solution?

That’s what Corevist Commerce Cloud does with dynamic reports from SAP. You can show standard SAP reports or custom reports — whatever works for your business. (Real-time SAP integration required.)

4. Quote display

Taking quotes through B2B eCommerce is a great way to speed up your sales cycle (and reduce friction in your customer experience). Whatever B2B eCommerce platform you choose, it should definitely support this feature.

The challenge is getting those quotes to play nicely with SAP ERP. You don’t want a separate database of quotes in B2B eCommerce that needs duplication and synchronization with SAP. This can create all kinds of problems. If the B2B eCommerce store logs two quotes, and both are claiming the last 10 widgets, and SAP doesn’t know about the quotes in real time, who gets the widgets?

That’s why we say real-time SAP integration is required for this feature to work in B2B eCommerce.

5. Order status for all orders

If your B2B eCommerce portal is going to become a destination for customers, it needs to offer all the features they need to do business with you online. That means you have to cover more than just the B2B transaction. You need to give customers self-service account management, too — and that means real-time order status for all orders. Not just B2B eCommerce orders, but also those from EDI, phone, fax and email. (Real-time SAP integration required.)

6. Shipment status

If you’re going to give B2B users real-time order status, you should give them shipment status, too. When customers log in to B2B eCommerce, they need to know which line items have shipped and which are still pending. (Real-time SAP integration required.)

7. Tracking numbers

If you’re going to tell customers whether an order is shipped, they’re going to expect to answer their next question, too, “Where’s my order?”

Obviously, you don’t have control over that information — but your carrier does.

That’s why carrier tracking integration is an essential feature of any B2B eCommerce platform.

8. Order confirmation from SAP

If your SAP ERP system already produces order confirmation documents, and if B2B eCommerce orders post to SAP instantly (more on that below), then think about this: Your B2B portal should give customers access to their order confirmation from SAP. (Real-time SAP integration required.)

9. Month-end statement

If you offer net 30/60/90 terms, some customers may need a month-end statement document to give to their A/P department. Make it easy for them by offering their month-end statement, direct from SAP, right within the B2B eCommerce portal. This is the Corevist way. (Real-time SAP integration required.)

10. Credit status

Customers need to know where they stand with you. If their next order is going to go on credit block, and they need that order to ship out immediately, they won’t be too happy if they find out it was delayed due to credit standing.

This B2B eCommerce feature is often overlooked, but it’s essential to a great customer experience. (Real-time SAP integration required.)

11. View open invoices

If you’re going to take B2B eCommerce orders on invoice, then your portal needs to display unpaid invoices. But if customers can still place orders outside of B2B eCommerce (i.e. via EDI, phone, fax or email), then the portal needs to show all invoices in SAP. (Real-time SAP integration required.)

Without this crucial feature, your B2B eCommerce solution won’t provide the comprehensive self-service that customers need.

But invoices alone aren’t enough. You need to show open items from SAP, too.

12. View open items

Invoices are only one type of open item. In SAP terms, an open item is anything that contributes to the customer’s outstanding balance, whether it’s positive or negative. Invoices contribute to this balance, but so do adjustments like credit memos and debit memos.

If you don’t think this is a B2B eCommerce feature, think again. B2B buyers have been begging for self-service capabilities for years. They can see their account details when they shop on Amazon as consumers, and they bring those expectations to work.

Of course, a B2B company’s account standing with a manufacturer is more complex than B2C. But buyers still want self-service here, and full visibility into open items is the key. How else are customers going to get answers to questions like these without calling customer service?

• How much do I owe, and how much of that balance is overdue?
• Which invoices should I pay off first to get my balance to a healthy place?
• We got a credit memo for a shipping issue. Did you already apply the memo to our account, or can I apply it now to get us off credit block?

As you can see, real-time SAP integration is required to deliver these features in B2B eCommerce.  

III. Invoice and payment features

Here’s another area where B2B eCommerce should support more than just the transaction. Like order status and shipment status, invoices and payments are an essential feature of B2B account management.

Here’s what to look for in a B2B eCommerce solution.

13. Pay off open invoices via self-service

In B2C eCommerce, customers pay for their orders immediately via credit card (or some other form of digital payment). However, in B2B eCommerce, you may offer net 30/60/90 payment terms with invoices generated for the customer.

If that’s the case, self-service invoice payments is an essential B2B eCommerce feature. If you want those payments to clear the account immediately in SAP (and you should), you’ll need real-time SAP integration for this. (Real-time SAP integration required.)

14. View invoice/payment history

Your B2B eCommerce portal should also let users see which payments were posted against which invoices. This will help them understand where their money went if there’s any confusion. It’s an essential B2B eCommerce feature if your customers place numerous large orders with you. (Real-time SAP integration required.)

IV. B2B eCommerce catalog features

Not every B2B user needs a catalog. Some just want to hit the portal, punch in an SKU and get an order placed. But for users who aren’t that sophisticated, a catalog is an essential feature of B2B eCommerce. Here’s what to look for.

15. Personalized catalogs and picklists

If different customers have different lists of materials that they’re allowed to buy, then your B2B eCommerce catalog should feature only the relevant materials for each user.

Most organizations have already defined these “personalized picklists” in SAP. If that’s the case, then your B2B eCommerce solution should leverage those existing relationships without forcing you to duplicate that logic.

16. Pictures, videos and documentation for products

Even if you offer personalized picklists and catalogs, not every B2B user is sophisticated enough to know what they need when they come to the portal. This is where rich content (pictures, videos and documentation) can really make a difference in your B2B eCommerce conversion rates.

In a nutshell, you want to give customers as much information as you can about each product. But your B2B eCommerce solution should allow you to present that information in a clear, intuitive hierarchy so people don’t get confused.

17. Advanced product search

Sounds obvious, but it’s worth saying. A smart, intuitive search feature is essential for B2B eCommerce. Without it, customers will call customer service if they can’t help themselves in the portal—and the defeats one of the primary drivers of B2B eCommerce (cost savings).

18. Real-time pricing

If every customer gets the same price, and if prices never change, ever, then you don’t need real time pricing.

Otherwise, you do.

Your B2B eCommerce solution should feature 100% accurate pricing for every logged-in customer, in every scenario. That means B2B eCommerce needs to reflect your SAP pricing rules in real time.

Note: Corevist Commerce Cloud offers the same real-time pricing in the catalog that users can get in the dashboard with our quick price and availability feature. It’s the same underlying logic and the same pricing in both places, every time. 

19. Real-time availability (including customer-specific ATP if you offer that)

Like pricing, real-time availability is essential to a great B2B eCommerce experience. If customers can’t get accurate stock availability, how can they feel confident in placing an order?

This gets more complicated if you show different ATP (available to promise) quantities to different customers. If that’s the case, your B2B eCommerce portal should feature the right available quantities for every material, for every customer, in real time.

In this sense, it should really act as a window into your SAP system. That’s why we say this feature requires real-time SAP integration.

20. Related products

This is a classic eCommerce feature in B2C eCommerce. In fact, in the retail world, it’s the cornerstone of any merchandising or cross-selling/upselling program.

You can use related products that way in B2B eCommerce — but this feature has other purposes, too.

For example, if you sell large pieces of equipment as well as the related parts and consumables, you may have those product relationships defined in SAP. If that’s the case, you want to bring those relationships to the B2B eCommerce store. This can help remind customers that they need to reorder consumables — or it may introduce them to those products for the first time.

Either way, related products is an essential B2B eCommerce feature.  

V. B2B eCommerce cart features

What features do users need when they get to the B2B eCommerce cart? Quite a few, actually — and most of these features depend on a deep, real-time SAP integration.

Here’s everything you should look for in the cart portion of your B2B eCommerce solution.

21. Instant, error-free order posting to SAP

Here’s where most B2B eCommerce platforms can’t deliver with middleware for SAP integration. Because SAP data and business rules evolve over time, you have to keep revising all that logic in both middleware and B2B eCommerce to keep everything in agreement.

If you can’t (and many organizations can’t), then you’ll get problem orders coming from B2B eCommerce.

Wrong material, wrong price, wrong quantity — there are lots of possibilities.

It’s not a problem if you have really low order volumes. But at scale, it will drive up your cost to serve — and worst case, it can threaten the viability of your B2B eCommerce initiative.

That’s why your B2B eCommerce solution should feature intelligent error messaging to the user. If the solution is built on a real-time SAP integration, it should query SAP whenever the user goes to place the order. Before accepting it, the solution should check the relevant data and logic in SAP and let the user know if there are any problems.

That way, the customer can fix the order (change a quantity, change a SKU, whatever the case may be) before placing it. It’s a better customer experience — and it’s better for your operations, too, since it will only allow 100% accurate orders to post to SAP. (Real-time SAP integration required.)

22. Real-time pricing and availability

Accurate pricing and availability are just as important in the cart as they are in the catalog. If you have any quantity bundling rules (i.e. material A costs less when bought with material B), then the cart needs to reflect those pricing shifts in real time. It also needs to display accurate inventory availability.

Here, Corevist Commerce Cloud uses the same price-check integration that we’ve discussed elsewhere to deliver 100% accurate, dynamic pricing and availability within the cart. Whatever prices and available quantities your customer would get over the phone from customer service (as the rep checks SAP), that’s what they’ll see in the Corevist cart. 

You can’t deliver this B2B eCommerce feature without real-time SAP integration.

23. Multiple shipping locations

This is an essential B2B eCommerce feature — particularly for manufacturers. If your customers have multiple receiving locations for shipments, then your B2B eCommerce solution should give them the option to choose the best destination for their order.  

24. Multiple ship-to/sold-to relationships supported

If your customers buy on behalf of multiple entities, they may need the ability to choose between these entities when assigning an order (whether for shipping, billing or paying purposes). If you have these relationships defined in SAP, your B2B eCommerce solution should reflect those relationships, allowing customers to choose between the sold-tos and ship-tos that they have access to.  

25. Support for quote workflows

For some organizations, particularly manufacturers, quotes are an essential B2B eCommerce feature. Not every product is a good fit for ordering with a few clicks. A robust B2B eCommerce solution should support quote creation, review and conversion to an order. Deep SAP integration is usually required here to ensure the quoting process conforms to ERP business rules.  

26. Support for requested delivery dates

If your current order processes let customers specify the date when they want their order delivered, then you may need this feature in B2B eCommerce, too. The trick is pulling the RDD (requested delivery date) from SAP and displaying it in the web store. To nail this feature, you need deep, real-time SAP integration. 

27. Alternative units of measure

Here’s another B2B eCommerce feature that manufacturers may need. If your materials can be sold in different units of measure (say, feet vs. meters or pounds vs. kilograms), you may want to give customers this flexibility in the web store. If you’ve already defined these alternative units of measure in SAP, then the B2B eCommerce solution should reuse that existing logic through deep SAP integration.

28. Saved carts

This is a no-brainer feature. Any B2B eCommerce solution worth its salt should offer saved carts so users can place repeat orders with minimal effort. It’s also worth pointing out that real-time SAP integration is important here, too. It ensures that when a user loads a saved cart, they’ll receive accurate real-time pricing (in case pricing has changed since the last time they placed the order).

29. Upload carts

This feature is critical for advanced B2B users who need a fast, easy way to create an order. It allows them to upload an order to the shopping cart via a standard file format (such as CSV) without inputting a single SKU in the B2B eCommerce portal.

30. SKU substitutions

What happens if a B2B eCommerce user types in an SKU to add it directly to the cart — but they’ve typed in a material that they’re not allowed to order? Or one that’s discontinued, or …

There are many scenarios in which your B2B eCommerce solution needs intelligent SKU substitution. If you’ve defined these rules in SAP, then you should leverage that logic in your B2B eCommerce portal. (Real-time SAP integration required.)

VI. Features for sales and customer service

B2B eCommerce isn’t just for customers. Sales and customer service may need access to the portal, too — whether they’re placing orders on behalf of customers or just checking orders and invoices.

Here’s the most essential B2B eCommerce feature for these users.

31. Multi-customer management

It’s rare for a sales or customer service rep to work with one account only (though it does happen). If your reps in either department work with more than one customer, your B2B eCommerce solution should allow them to switch easily between different accounts.

Ideally, the solution should honor the mapping of rep and account relationships that you’ve already defined in SAP. That means it should allow reps to toggle between different ship-tos, sold-tos and payer accounts where applicable. (Real-time SAP integration required.)

Here at Corevist, we’ve been serving manufacturers with SAP-integrated B2B eCommerce solutions since 2008. During that time, we’ve learned a lot about the order-to-cash (OTC) process and the tools and processes that help manufacturers be successful at it. We’ve used that experience and more than a decade of user data to create New Corevist Commerce.

New Corevist Commerce has some of the same best-in-class capabilities that can be found in our foundational product, now referred to as Classic Corevist Commerce, including a media-rich catalog, SAP-integrated shopping cart and self-service invoicing and payments.

It also boasts many new innovations that are designed to deploy more quickly, accelerate time-to-value, power a hyper-personalized user experience and allow expansive integrations with other order-to-cash applications. 

Check it out:

Want to dig a little deeper? Here’s everything you need to know about New Corevist Commerce:

 

I. New vs. classic features & functionality

Features from Classic Corevist Commerce

New Corevist Commerce includes many of the best-in-class capabilities of Classic Corevist Commerce – but with a new look and feel:

• Catalog browsing with rich content, intelligent search, AND cross-sell/upsell — PLUS personalized pricing, picklists, SKU permissions, and more, all driven by real-time SAP data. 
• SAP-integrated shopping cart with relevant, personalized business rules enforced (e.g., pricing, inventory/ATP availability, RDD/EDD and minimum quantity), intelligent error messaging provided to the user, and orders with no errors are posted to SAP. 
• Full account management capabilities with SAP integration. Our solutions offer complete order and invoice history for all channels, real-time order status and credit status, and real-time tracking integration with all major carriers.
• Self-service invoice payments through integration with the payments provider of your choice. Transactions post to SAP instantly. 

NEW features & functionality

As the needs of manufacturers evolve, we continue to refine our offerings accordingly. Here are the net new features that are only available in New Corevist Commerce:

1. Dynamic, real-time reports from SAP

Every manufacturer has unique reports which play pivotal roles in the OTC cycle. New Corevist Commerce includes a Reports tab with some powerful functionality behind it. 

In essence, New Corevist Commerce dynamically pulls and displays any eCommerce-related SAP report into the portal. The app automatically populates the columns and rows that are defined in the report in SAP. No configuration or customization required. If your report changes in SAP, the user experience in Corevist automatically changes to match.

This functionality is native to New Corevist Commerce. Like so many features in Corevist, it can be restricted to specific users (or hidden altogether). 

2. Widget-based dashboard layout

The New Corevist Commerce supports an intuitive, widget-based layout for the dashboard (the first screen the user sees when logging on). At this time, the dashboard can show widgets for recently shipped orders, outstanding invoices, and price/availability check. 

We’ll continue building out our library of available widgets, and we welcome your input on what to build. 

3. New Corevist Commerce uses your SAP data to power a hyper-personalized user experience.  The app automatically knows who the user is and what to do with the data it retrieves from SAP. For example, the product catalog is pre-filtered based on that user’s sales area and inclusions and exclusions.

II. A fresh new UI driven by real customer conversations 

Our clients and prospects spoke, and we listened. On every sales call, we got feedback on our UI, design, and general usability.

The result is our new look and feel. As always with Corevist, this is just the beginning. Our user experience will keep getting better from here as we continue to engage our iterative customer feedback process.

III. A highly efficient front-end experience

Behind the scenes, the SAP integration of Corevist’s products remains unchanged. Our solutions are certified on both SAP NetWeaver and S/4HANA, and they access your SAP system via secure VPN. They provide real-time interaction with SAP for all data that’s essential to customer self-service related to ordering, tracking, and account management. 

But real-time SAP data is only one piece of the puzzle for your customers. We’re leveraging the latest and greatest front-end technologies to dramatically improve how your customers interact with you. The result is a faster-loading user interface, fewer clicks, more intuitive navigation. Caching the data, being able to refresh the data on demand, and being able to load widgets and data independently, all contribute to a better experience — one that gives the user total control.

How to take advantage of the New Corevist Commerce 

If you’re already a client, work with your PM to create a migration plan. If you’re new to Corevist, reach out to schedule a discovery call with our sales team. 

Originally published Oct 8, 2019. Updated Feb 23, 2021.

At Corevist, our clients often request SSO (single sign on) integration with the Corevist Platform, either as part of their initial launch or as a subsequent enhancement. Since “SSO” can cover so many use cases, we wanted to go over the most common SSO use cases we see (and what they look like in a Corevist Platform scenario).

First off: What the Corevist Platform covers without SSO

Since the Corevist Platform covers multiple business functions, it’s worth noting those business processes which don’t require SSO. Depending on your chosen product edition, here’s what the Corevist Platform covers (real-time SAP integration included):

– Order history, order status, line item status, & shipment status checks

– Shopping, browsing, product compare, configurable products, and more

– Online ordering

– Invoice payments and self-service account management

– Compare Corevist Platform Editions for full details.

An SSO integration allows you to unify Corevist access with access to 3rd party apps that cover business processes outside the scope of Corevist. Here are the most common use cases—we cover each of them in detail below:  

1. Allow internal users to authenticate to Corevist via your corporate active directory

2. Allow your customers to authenticate to Corevist using credentials from your corporate website

3. Allow your customers to authenticate to Corevist via their own corporate active directory

4. Allow your customers to authenticate to Corevist using their credentials from Salesforce

5. Allow your customers to authenticate to Corevist using their credentials from G Suite

1. Allow internal users to authenticate to Corevist via your corporate active directory

In this use case, the goal is to make life simpler for your Sales reps, CSRs (customer service reps), or any internal user who has access to an internal application and also needs access to Corevist.

The sky’s the limit here. Your SSO solution can cover as many apps as your employees need to access, and it authenticates against your corporate active directory.

Also note that we can authenticate to Corevist via your existing SSO solution, or build one for you.

2. Allow your customers to authenticate to Corevist using credentials from your corporate website

If you have a corporate website with a unique login that isn’t tied to your corporate active directory, you can use those credentials to authenticate to Corevist, too.

We see this use case for companies that have a disconnected catalog website and haven’t elected to unify their catalog with their Corevist web channel.

In this scenario, your customers can log in to your catalog site and Corevist through one sign-on. Note, however, that they can’t place orders from the catalog. This is why we recommend using the Corevist Platform for your entire web channel, so customers don’t have to type in the SKUs they want to order in Corevist after browsing a separate catalog.

3. Allow your customers to authenticate to Corevist via their own corporate active directory

This is a more specialized use case, and it requires coordination with your customers. The idea is to make it easier for your customers to buy from you by authenticating their Corevist login against their own corporate active directory.

We see this with clients who have only a few major customers (i.e. manufacturers whose customers are a limited number of distributors). Since the number of customers covered in the SSO integration is relatively low, it’s feasible to authenticate each customer against their company’s active directory.

Note that we don’t recommend this solution for manufacturers with hundreds or thousands of customers. It’s simply not feasible at that scale.

4. Allow your customers to authenticate to Corevist using their credentials from Salesforce

If your customers are part of Salesforce Community, and therefore aren’t in your corporate active directory, you can empower them to log on to Corevist with the same credentials they use for Salesforce. This makes their workflow easier–and since both Corevist and Salesforce are cloud apps, this doesn’t add any complexity to your in-house IT architecture.  

5. Allow your customers to authenticate to Corevist using their credentials from G Suite

This use case is straightforward. If you want to simplify login for your customers, and you know some of them use G Suite, you can offer them SSO via their G Suite credentials. 

That way, when they’re already logged in to other G Suite applications which they use for work, logging into Corevist is seamless and easy.