2026 Top B2B Self-Service Portals for Mid-Market Manufacturers

Every year, the Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce Platforms highlights leaders in digital commerce. The research is thorough and stands on its own.

It is also built for the category Gartner defines as “digital commerce,” meaning interactive self service or assisted buying journeys that include storefronts, catalogs, search, carts, checkout, and fully priced orders. In other words, the workflow of discovery to persuasion to conversion.

But across sales conversations, implementation projects, and support tickets, we consistently see a different pattern. Many mid-market manufacturers are not trying to perfect digital persuasion. They are trying to solve post order visibility and transactional servicing: order status, invoice access, pricing accuracy, dealer enablement, and CSR workload reduction.

That is a different problem.

To Gartner’s credit, the report itself calls this out. It notes the rise of comprehensive customer portals designed to support postsales interactions such as service requests, claims management, order tracking, and personalized support across the customer life cycle.

So we decided to have some fun and put a simple question to the test: which vendors most clearly position themselves for ERP centered operational self service, not just digital selling.

Instead of debating internally, we structured the question and asked two large language models to score vendors based strictly on what each vendor chooses to emphasize on its public website.

We added one constraint that often gets glossed over: the ERP.

For manufacturers, the ERP is the system of record. Pricing, inventory, order status, invoices, and customer hierarchies live there. Whether a portal succeeds often comes down to how it treats that system.

When a portal is built around the ERP as the source of truth, pricing reflects contract reality, inventory reflects actual availability, and order history reflects what truly shipped. When it is layered on top as a commerce front end, data must be replicated, synchronized, or translated. That can work, but it introduces latency and reconciliation. Over time, small mismatches become service tickets. Service tickets become manual work. Manual work erodes the ROI the portal was meant to deliver.

So the architectural question becomes critical: is the portal built around the ERP as the source of truth, or layered on top as a commerce front end?

That distinction shaped the scoring.

What follows is a positioning analysis, not a technical architecture audit. It evaluates how clearly vendors speak to ERP centered operational self service use cases in their public positioning.

A quick note on scope

Gartner tracks more than 160 vendors in this market and evaluated 19 vendors in the Magic Quadrant. The report also states that exclusion does not imply a lack of viability. In many cases, it reflects inclusion criteria tied to revenue scale, customer counts, geography, and growth thresholds.

This scorecard is not trying to replicate Gartner. It is a different lens on a different decision: operational self service portals for manufacturers, anchored in the ERP. Readers who want the full Magic Quadrant analysis can download the official report directly from SAP’s website here.

The prompt we gave the LLMs

We selected capabilities that directly affect post order visibility, transactional accuracy, and ERP centered servicing because those are the constraints manufacturers raise most often.

“You are a B2B portal expert advising mid market manufacturers.

Assume the ERP system is the system of record.

Score the following vendors on whether they clearly offer the following capabilities based on their public websites and product positioning.

Scoring rules
1 = Vendor explicitly claims the capability in portal or operational self service terms on its public site
0 = Not clearly marketed or only implied

If a capability is only implied, score it 0. Only assign 1 when the vendor’s own site clearly describes it in portal or operational self service language.

Capabilities
Real time ERP integration (system of record positioning, not generic “integration”)
Contract pricing
Account based pricing
Customer hierarchies and multi role access
Order history and reorder
Invoice and document retrieval
Shipment tracking
RFQ or quoting
Dealer or distributor enablement
Explicit “B2B portal” positioning
Fast launch or low complexity positioning
Operational self service focus for known customers rather than merchandising narrative

Vendors offerings evaluated:

Corevist
SAP B2B Self-Service Portal
Virto Portal
Salesforce B2B Commerce + Experience Cloud
Adobe Commerce
commercetools
Shopify Plus

This framework evaluates clarity of positioning, not total feature breadth, scalability, or what could be built with customization.” 

For readers who want to see the prompt executed live, the full walkthrough is available here: https://youtu.be/IpjwYjTwORY

2026 B2B Self-Service Portal Scorecard

Vendors receive a score of 0 where ERP system of record positioning or operational self service emphasis is not explicit in public messaging, even if the capability could be built through integration. Vendors receive a score of 1 where ERP system-of-record positioning or operational self-service emphasis is explicitly reflected in public messaging. Treat this as a lens on positioning, not as the final word on architecture.

What the LLMs revealed

1. Portal messaging matters
   Only a subset of vendors explicitly lead with “B2B portal” language. SAP and Virto clearly market portal solutions by name. Others emphasize B2B commerce, digital commerce, or customer experience. When the primary problem is post order servicing for known customers, that distinction matters.
2. ERP depth is the divider
   ERP integration is not optional for manufacturers. Commerce platforms can integrate with ERP, but portal centric solutions tend to frame ERP as the system of record and build the experience around it. That stance affects pricing integrity, order accuracy, shipment visibility, and customer trust, which directly impact cost to serve.
3. Operational self service is a distinct category
   Platforms like Salesforce, Adobe, commercetools, and Shopify are strong digital commerce engines. For organizations prioritizing acquisition, merchandising, and digital experience breadth, those platforms may be the right fit. Operational self service for existing customers is simply not the dominant story in their positioning.

Vendor breakdown

Corevist — 12/12
Public positioning emphasizes ERP centered self service and post order workflows, including pricing, invoices, order history, and dealer enablement. Under this scoring method, the messaging maps cleanly to the criteria.

SAP B2B Self-Service Portal — 11/12
Explicitly marketed as a B2B self service portal, with clear ERP system of record narrative and strong coverage of account, orders, and invoice oriented servicing. Portal capabilities may be evaluated in the context of SAP’s broader commerce and experience stack depending on deployment approach.

Virto Portal — 9/12
Clearly markets a B2B portal solution with account structures and RFQ workflows. ERP integration is supported, though ERP as system of record is less emphasized in the public narrative than portal language itself.

Salesforce B2B Commerce + Experience Cloud — 5/12
Strong B2B commerce capabilities and portal infrastructure, with messaging centered on commerce, experience, and CRM driven workflows. ERP anchored operational servicing can be delivered, but it is not the core public story.

Adobe Commerce — 5/12
Robust commerce and experience orientation with B2B features like quoting and account based pricing. Operational self service is possible, but public positioning is more strongly tied to experience and merchandising.

commercetools — 4/12
Composable commerce infrastructure that can support complex B2B use cases with the right orchestration. Its public story reads more like platform building blocks than a packaged operational portal.

Shopify Plus B2B — 5/12
B2B capability layered onto a commerce foundation with strengths in speed and usability. Public positioning remains more storefront and merchandising oriented than ERP centered servicing.

Why this matters

Most leading digital commerce platforms can support elements of B2B self service. Far fewer position themselves as ERP centered operational portals for known customers.

That difference is not about capability. It is about orientation.

Manufacturers evaluating vendors should ask:

Are we optimizing for discovery, persuasion, and conversion?
Or are we optimizing for post order visibility and transactional servicing?

Both are valid strategies. They are not the same category.

The real question for 2026

The Magic Quadrant evaluates digital commerce platforms.

This exercise evaluates operational self service portals built around the ERP as the system of record.

If your primary constraint is CSR workload, order accuracy, and ERP visibility, that distinction will drive ROI more than merchandising capability alone.

How to use this scorecard

This scorecard reflects vendor positioning, not a complete technical audit. Use it as a starting point for deeper evaluation.

If ERP integration is critical in your environment, consider asking:

• Are prices and inventory read directly from ERP in real time, or synchronized to the platform
• What is the latency between order submission and ERP confirmation
• Is the integration prebuilt and certified, or custom

If post order servicing is central to your goals, consider asking:

• Is there a prebuilt workspace for CSRs, dealers, or account managers
• Can customers reorder entire past transactions easily
• How are contract pricing and customer hierarchies enforced at runtime

First published Dec 14, 2021. Refreshed Aug 8, 2023.

B2B portals were important before the pandemic, but they’ve become essential now. In-person sales models have seen significant disruption. Likewise, staffing challenges and supply chain disruption have made it more difficult than ever to interact with customers via phone, fax, and email.

Clearly, manufacturers and distributors need self-service portals for customers to place orders (and track orders and invoices).  

There’s a story behind every successful B2B portal (and every failed one, too). Here are 6 stories of manufacturers who went above and beyond to create a great customer experience.

Click to jump:

1. Giving customers 100% accurate, real-time data

2. B2B portal with great customer adoption rates

3. Customer self-service restored

4. Twelve unified B2B portals in nine countries

5. Salvaging a spare parts business with a B2B portal

6. Replacing a B2B portal and maintaining deep SAP integration

7. Eliminating phone, fax, and email ordering

8. B2B Portal Checklist

LORD considered several market-leading B2B eCommerce platforms, as recommended by Gartner and Forrester—but these options were too big and complex (not to mention expensive). Ultimately, LORD chose Corevist Commerce Cloud for their B2B portal because our solution kept SAP at the core of all business data and processes. (Of course, it was also much simpler to implement, given our SAP integration, and far more affordable.)

Read the full case study here.

“Our motto is, ‘If you can do it in SAP, that’s where it should stay’. We wanted our B2B portal to be a reflection of our SAP system, not a recreation of it. And, we wanted a vendor that shared our philosophy.”

—Jane Mascia, Senior Business Systems Analyst

Key functionality: Quick price and availability check

7. PARI Respiratory – Eliminating phone, fax, and email ordering

PARI Respiratory, a global manufacturer of respiratory care products, needed to launch a B2B portal that met the needs of numerous stakeholders (not to mention customers). PARI’s dealers and distributors wanted a B2B portal to make the ordering process more convenient, and the company needed to relieve their customer services reps from manual data entry.

Meanwhile, PARI’s marketing department needed an attractive product catalog, while IT wanted direct, real-time SAP integration that didn’t compromise data security (and didn’t increase their workload).

PARI chose Corevist Commerce Cloud to deliver on the needs of all stakeholders. Customers got the B2B ordering portal they needed, marketing got an beautiful product catalog, and IT got the secure, managed SAP integration they needed.

Read the full case study here.

“We are extremely pleased with the outcome of this project. This could have been a story about competing interests and agendas, but it wasn’t. Our customers got the online ordering system they requested.”

—Dale Anderson, CFO

Key functionality: Error-free order posting to SAP

8. B2B portal checklist

While each of these B2B portal examples is unique, they actually have a lot in common. In a nutshell, they bring the OTC (order-to-cash) cycle online for manufacturers and their dealers and distributors. This creates more transparency with those channel partners and more efficient backend processes.

So how do you achieve what these companies did?

The key is to define what your ideal B2B portal looks like.

While every company has different needs, all successful B2B portals have a few things in common. Here’s the basic functionality you should look for as you put together your portal project.

Cart capabilities

• Personalized catalogs and picklists driven by SAP data
• 100% accurate contract pricing from SAP for every SKU (including bundled pricing rules)
• Automatic product substitution driven by SAP logic (for discontinued products)
• Support for multiple ship-tos, sold-tos, and payers driven by SAP data
• Intelligent error messaging, driven by SAP business rules, to help customers build perfect orders
• Only 100% error-free orders accepted (and posted to SAP in real time)
• Saved carts
• Order upload

Tracking capabilities

• Full order history from all channels (B2B portal, phone, fax, email, EDI), straight from SAP
• Real-time order status, shipment status, and line-item status, straight from SAP
• Full integration with all major carriers for real-time tracking number updates
• Full invoice history and real-time status for each invoice, straight from SAP
• Real-time credit status from SAP (so customers know if their order will go on credit block)

Payment capabilities

• Payment at checkout and/or ability to pay off invoices (depending on your business processes), with real-time account clearing in SAP
• Support for your preferred digital payment methods (like credit card, ACH, or eCheck) through an integrated payment gateway

Some manufacturers don’t want to launch all of this at once. This is understandable. If you’re 100% paper-based today, relying on phone, fax, and email to interact with customers, it’s intimidating to dive into the digital deep end.

If that’s you, look for a platform that allows incremental rollouts. For example, on Corevist Commerce Cloud, you can start with our Order Tracking edition for your first project, which gives your customers self-service tracking for orders and invoices. When you’re ready, you can upgrade to online ordering, add online payments, add a product catalog, and more. 

Don’t forget global scalability. If you need multiple B2B portals for different brands, sales areas, or languages, you’ll want to find a platform that’s architected for easy expansion. While many vendors will promise this, it all comes down to SAP integration. If this crucial component can’t be leveraged for multiple portals, but rather has to be rebuilt, you’ll spend too much on your B2B portal program.

Originally published March 6, 2018. Refreshed July 11, 2023.

Comparing the top B2B ecommerce platforms? You’re not alone. Forrester has predicted that US B2B ecommerce sales will top $2 trillion in 2023 and $3 trillion in 2027. In that year, Forrester predicts that B2B ecommerce will account for 24% of all B2B sales in the US.

Clearly, B2B ecommerce is the name of the game. And whether you’re scoping your first B2B ecommerce project, or you’re considering switching platforms, it’s essential to understand what the market offers as you compare options.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to find real data on the nitty-gritty details of different platforms.

That’s why we put together a FREE chart comparing the top 6 B2B ecommerce platforms. Click to download the full chart:

Top 6 B2B ecommerce platforms 2023

In our B2B platform chart, we compare:

• Corevist Commerce Cloud
• SAP Commerce Cloud
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud
• Adobe/Magento
• Bigcommerce
• Shopify

While there are many other options for B2B ecommerce platforms, these are the ones that SAP companies consider most frequently. 

Ready to compare? Download the chart now

Understanding the chart and comparing platforms

No doubt about it, our chart contains a lot of information. It’s important to understand the nuance behind every item in the chart.

Here’s the in-depth information behind every item in the chart. 

Overview

Built specifically for SAP companies

Organizations that run on SAP ECC or S/4HANA have typically made a huge investment in their ERP system. This is where all business data lives, from customers, to products, to transactions—and everything in between.

The ERP is also the system of record for complex business rules. Every customer’s unique contract pricing lives in the ERP. Likewise, scaled pricing, minimum quantities, real-time inventory or ATP (available to promise)—it all comes from the ERP.

You could say these organizations are “ERP-first.” The ERP is the foundation of their entire business.

When an ERP-first organization looks for a B2B ecommerce solution, the question of ERP integration becomes crucial. How will B2B ecommerce share data with SAP ERP?

In our chart, Corevist Commerce Cloud and SAP Commerce Cloud are the only two platforms that were built specifically for SAP companies. This becomes important when we get to ERP integration (see below).

Platform provider implements & manages each solution

Some B2B ecommerce platform vendors don’t implement the solutions that run on their platform. Others offer the option to use the platform provider as the implementation vendor, or to find another partner. 

Multiple vendors required

This is an extension of the previous item. In a nutshell, this item asks, “Can you launch the B2B ecommerce solution through a single vendor? Or do you need to engage multiple vendors?” Reducing vendor count is a great way to speed up a project and reduce the complexity that your organization has to handle. As you compare B2B ecommerce platforms, it’s worth considering how many vendors you’ll need to implement a given platform.

Project duration, including SAP integration

How long will it take to implement your B2B ecommerce solution? How does SAP ERP integration impact that timeline? This is an essential consideration. Note that Corevist Commerce Cloud launches in 30-90 days, depending on your chosen package—with SAP integration included. This is significantly faster than every alternative. Download the chart now to get all the details.

Scale easily with spinoff sites that reuse SAP integration

Some organizations need more than one B2B ecommerce storefront, with every storefront integrated to the same ERP system (or to an ERP system that’s configured similarly). The question here is whether each B2B ecommerce platform provides this easy scalability without requiring a duplicate investment in ERP integration infrastructure. The answer may surprise you.

IT Architecture

This is an essential consideration as you compare B2B ecommerce platforms. Who hosts the software? Who’s responsible for upgrading and maintaining it? What responsibility for infrastructure will your organization take on if you use a certain platform? 

Here are all the factors that the chart provides for comparing platforms in terms of architecture.

Cloud-hosted

Is the solution hosted in the cloud, or will you need your own servers to run it? Modern solutions are cloud-native, and we’re glad to report that every platform in the chart is cloud-hosted. Comparing them on this point is easy!

Platform stores data in its own database

When it comes to ERP integration, it’s worth considering the risks of duplicating and synchronizing data. Any time you copy essential business data or logic, rather than reading and writing it directly, you risk creating data governance problems. You’ll want to look closely at how each B2B ecommerce platform handles your data.

Separate SAP ERP integration solution required

Will your chosen B2B ecommerce platform require a third-party integration to your ERP? If so, this will drive up the cost, complexity, and risk of your project. Use the chart to see how the leading platforms compare in terms of ERP integration capabilities.

Built on real-time SAP ERP integration

For SAP companies, the question of ERP integration is essential. Our chart shows which platforms include real-time SAP ERP integration—and which don’t.  

If you’re on ECC or S/4HANA, you’ll also want to consider whether your preferred B2B ecommerce platform includes an SAP-certified integration for that specific ERP. 

(Hint: Corevist Commerce Cloud includes an SAP-certified integration for ECC or S/4HANA.)

Cost

Cost forecasting for B2B ecommerce is a complex undertaking. It’s not enough to consider licensing and hosting costs. Implementation costs, FTEs required, transaction fees—there are many components. 

Use our free chart to compare the top 6 platforms in terms of cost. Here’s what we cover in the chart.

FTEs required during implementation

How many FTEs will your organization need to supply during the implementation? This is a critical, and often overlooked, cost factor.

Implementation cost

What will your implementation partner charge to build, refine, and launch the solution? You may be surprised at how the different platforms stack up.

FTEs required to support

After GoLive, how many FTEs will your organization need to provide to support B2B ecommerce? This information is hard to find for different platforms. Use our chart to get a sense of how different platforms will impact your ongoing IT staffing needs.

Annual cost of ownership (excluding FTEs)

Aside from staffing costs, how much will you spend per year to run a given B2B ecommerce platform? Our chart compares the top 6 platforms in terms of annual cost of ownership.

Transaction fees

Not every B2B ecommerce platform in our chart charges transaction fees—but two of them do. Make sure you understand the potential impact if you choose one of these platforms. Download the chart now to get the details.

Out-of-the-box features integrated to SAP ERP

Here’s an essential point of comparison. Does the B2B ecommerce platform include SAP-integrated features, right out of the box? This is a critical question for SAP companies—particularly those with complex business rules defined in the ERP. Our chart covers tons of features by platform and answers the crucial question of whether each feature is integrated to SAP. Here’s what we cover in the chart.

B2B ecommerce capabilities

• Real-time, customer-specific price & inventory from SAP
• SKU-based order entry with conversion to SAP material number
• Product catalog with rich content (PIM ready)
• SAP-integrated configurable products (SKU in SAP)
• Related products
• Order simulated against SAP business rules in real time
• Selection of shipping options
• Credit card checkout
• Drop shipping
• Error-free orders post to SAP instantly
• Saved carts
• Upload cart from CSV file
• Quote creation integrated to SAP
• Convert quote to order, integrated to SAP
• Change quotes and orders

Tracking capabilities

• Full order history from SAP, all channels included (EDI, phone, email…)
• Order details & status for every order in SAP
• Full quote history & status from SAP
• Real-time shipment tracking with major carrier integration
• Order, delivery, and billing outputs from SAP
• Display of custom ABAP reports from SAP
• Full inventory history from SAP
• Invoice status and detail from SAP
• Payment history from SAP

As you can see, there’s a huge range of features that may (or may not) be integrated to SAP ERP out of the box. Download the chart now to compare all 6 platforms in terms of SAP-integrated features.

Add-ons available, integrated to SAP ERP

Some B2B ecommerce platforms may not include every possible feature in the out-of-the-box package. Specialized functionality may require an add-on. The question here is whether those add-ons are automatically integrated to SAP ERP. 

Here are the B2B ecommerce add-ons that we compare in the chart. 

Sales order automation

Not every customer will use the B2B ecommerce platform to place orders. Some customers may still send orders via email. Sales order automation solves this problem. It uses AI to analyze incoming email orders, posts them to the ERP if they are error-free, and routes them to customer service if the orders contain errors.

Digital invoice payments

Can your B2B ecommerce customers pay off invoices online—in the B2B ecommerce portal? Do their payments and account updates post to SAP instantly? Our chart compares the top 6 platforms from this perspective.

Separate D2C storefront support

B2B organizations often face complex challenges in terms of sales channels. For those that want to launch a D2C (direct to consumer) channel alongside B2B ecommerce, it’s important to ask how a given platform can support that initiative.

ERP integration continuity

This question is specifically for SAP companies. For those that are on SAP ECC and are migrating to S/4HANA, how will this massive shift affect B2B ecommerce?

The good news is that one platform follows you easily from ECC to S/4HANA. You can literally launch the integrated solution today on ECC and transfer that investment to S/4HANA with minimal heavy lifting. Download the chart to get all the details.

The takeaway: Look at SAP integration when you compare platforms

For SAP companies, the ERP integration can make or break B2B ecommerce. If customers can’t get accurate contract pricing, personalized inventory, and full account history in the portal, then the solution isn’t really working.

That’s why Corevist Commerce Cloud includes prebuilt, real-time integration for ECC or S/4HANA. Your B2B ecommerce solution always reflects the right data and logic, for every customer—automatically.

Because Corevist is a managed, cloud-hosted solution, you get it all without taking on any new responsibility for the technology. Your IT team simply maintains SAP ERP as they always have, and Corevist automatically displays the right information to every customer.

Does B2B ecommerce have weaknesses?

The answer depends on your needs—and your chosen platform. 

The key is to pinpoint what’s most important for your organization, then compare various platforms to your “must have” capabilities.

Many common weaknesses of B2B ecommerce relate to ERP integration. If your organization runs on SAP ERP, it’s essential to understand these potential issues (and how to solve them) as you proceed with a B2B ecommerce project.

Hint: This is why Corevist Commerce Cloud includes SAP integration out of the box. 

Without further ado, here are the 6 most common weaknesses that plague B2B ecommerce solutions. 

1. Missing (or unreliable) inventory data

The first thing a B2B ecommerce user needs to know is whether the product is available.

That sounds fairly basic. Surely every B2B ecommerce platform can provide 100% accurate, real-time inventory data?

The answer depends on whether B2B ecommerce or the ERP is the “system of record” for inventory data. In most organizations, that master system is the ERP, not B2B ecommerce. If the web store is going to display inventory data, it will have to come through an integration to the ERP. If you use personalized ATP (available to promise) calculations for different customers, then you definitely need a robust integration to SAP ERP.

Without that robust integration, you’re looking at a B2B ecommerce experience that doesn’t show inventory data—or, worse, shows inaccurate data.

Our client InHealth Technologies faced this problem with their old platform. The solution simply couldn’t show real-time inventory data.

Hint: This is why Corevist Commerce Cloud includes real-time inventory data from your SAP system, right out of the box. It’s just one of our 49 SAP integration points.

2. No personalized pricing from SAP ERP

Depending on your use case, B2B ecommerce may need to support personalized pricing that’s unique for each customer. This is especially true when the merchant is a manufacturer, and each customer has their own negotiated contract pricing.

Add unique quantity pricing rules for each customer, and things get a little more complicated.

In most organizations that run SAP ERP, all pricing rules are built out in SAP. This means B2B ecommerce needs to integrate deeply with SAP ERP to show the right pricing to every customer.

While most B2B ecommerce platforms can show pricing through third-party connectors, it’s worth noting that this complex architecture introduces technical debt for the merchant. Those 3 systems (B2B ecommerce, middleware, and SAP) will need full-time resources to support them and keep them synchronized and properly configured.

For organizations that can’t justify that cost and complexity, Corevist Commerce Cloud is a great alternative. Our platform includes direct, real-time integration to SAP. We manage the solution from top to bottom, including the integration, which saves our clients from taking on technical debt.

3. Unclear shipping information

In their lives as consumers, B2B buyers are accustomed to getting shipping information from Amazon. At the very least, B2B ecommerce should provide this level of buyer confidence. Customers deserve accurate estimates for shipping charges and an estimated delivery date.

However, that baseline is often not enough for manufacturers selling to dealers and distributors through B2B ecommerce. Depending on the manufacturer’s business processes, these users need may visibility into many more attributes of the shipping process. Even visibility may not be enough if buyers actually need control over these things. Here’s what we’re talking about:

• Selecting ship-from warehouse to control shipping costs and/or delivery time.
• Choosing a requested delivery date from an accurate calendar of available dates.
• Real-time address validation when the buyer is buying on behalf of a third party.
• Getting accurate shipping charges ahead of time, based on total weight and dimensions of the order as a whole.

Manufacturers typically have this data defined in SAP ERP. The challenge is to leverage all that value from SAP for B2B ecommerce. Doing so requires a deep integration to SAP ERP.

4. Cart not integrated to SAP ERP in real time

If you have complex business rules in SAP, then there’s a risk that B2B ecommerce will accept orders that don’t conform to those business rules.

Maybe customer A isn’t allowed to buy product X. Or they’re allowed to buy it, but not in that quantity.

Whatever the case, B2B ecommerce needs to simulate an order against your SAP business rules before placing it. That means the cart portion of the experience must be deeply integrated to SAP. Without this integration, B2B ecommerce may accept orders that will require manual follow-up and adjustment by customer service reps. At scale, this can increase customer frustration and drive up your cost to serve.

This is why Corevist Commerce Cloud includes deep SAP integration for every step of the customer journey—including the cart. Our platform simulates an order against the customer’s business rules in your SAP system and returns any relevant error messages so the customer can fix the order. Our solution only accepts 100% error-free orders, which greatly reduces the burden on customer service to follow up with customers.

5. Orders don’t post to SAP ERP instantly

Since most B2B ecommerce platforms don’t include ERP integration as part of the package, they require a complex architecture to duplicate and synchronize data between the two systems. When it comes to order placement, that means an order must be logged in the B2B ecommerce database, picked up by the middleware integration system, sent to SAP, and logged there as well.

Depending on how often the batch synchronization is set to run, the lack of instant order posting can cause problems. Inventory may no longer be available when the order finally hits the ERP (see our case study on InHealth Technologies). Another issue, though rarer, is that the customer may have exceeded their credit limit due to orders placed through other channels.

The best way to avoid these problems is to use a B2B ecommerce solution that’s integrated to SAP in real time. That way, orders post instantly. The customer claims the inventory that they need, and their credit status immediately changes to reflect the new order. Corevist Commerce Cloud provides this type of instant order posting to SAP.

6. No omnichannel order tracking

For many organizations, B2B ecommerce doesn’t exist in a vacuum. While most customers will prefer it to older ordering methods (like phone, fax, and email), a small percentage of customers may persist with legacy workflows. EDI customers may also continue placing orders through existing technology.

Regardless of the channel mix (or customer preferences), all customers need self-service access to all orders they’ve placed. They need to check the status of orders, line items, and invoices. They also need to track orders and shipments—preferably with real-time integration to carrier tracking numbers.

Most B2B ecommerce platforms can provide all this for web orders. The challenge is to provide information for orders placed by other means, i.e. not B2B ecommerce, which also reside in SAP ERP.

Here’s where Corevist Commerce Cloud stands out again. Customers can see all their orders from your SAP system, regardless of how they were placed. This includes orders from phone, fax, email, EDI, and B2B ecommerce. Corevist displays all this information directly from SAP in real time, which empowers you to reduce your customer service burden while providing a seamless customer experience.

The takeaway: Keep SAP at the core of B2B ecommerce

If your organization depends on SAP ERP for all data related to customers, products, orders, and finances, then B2B ecommerce needs to play nice with SAP. The best way to achieve that is to choose a platform that includes prebuilt, configurable SAP integration.

That’s the thinking behind Corevist Commerce Cloud. Our managed, cloud-hosted solution includes 49 SAP integration points to cover the entire customer journey. That’s why our solutions process over $2 billion in order value every year for SAP companies.

Looking For Hybris Alternatives?

Use our FREE chart to find the right commerce solution based on your total annual revenue and your integration requirements.

Find A Cost-Efficient Hybris Alternative For Large Organizations.

Not every manufacturer can justify the cost and complexity of hybris.

Use your company’s total annual revenue, plus ERP integration
required, to determine your best-fit hybris alternative.

SAP Hybris Alternatives: A Deeper Dive

Learn more about the hybris alternatives which are best suited to your company.

1. Hybris alternatives for organizations with <$300M in total annual revenue

If you’re a small business, the complexity of an enterprise-class hybris alternative like Salesforce may be hard to justify. In this revenue bracket, you should prioritize a great user experience, readily available frontend widgets, prebuilt connectors to other systems, and an eCommerce technology stack managed by the vendor rather than by you.

For this revenue bracket, Bigcommerce and Shopify are great alternatives to SAP hybris/Commerce Cloud.

For organizations with <$300M/year total revenue, Magento can be a great hybris alternative. There’s only one caveat: Magento is a PaaS (platform as a service) solution, rather than SaaS (software as a service). To build out, maintain, and support your solution, you’ll need to hire Magento developers, either in-house or through a third party.

2. Hybris alternatives for organizations with $300M – $5B in total annual revenue

In this revenue bracket, your choices in hybris competitors begin to diverge. When it comes to eCommerce requirements, most companies fall into two major buckets:

• You just need a beautiful B2C-style front end, and you don’t require any SAP ERP integration for B2B.
• Your entire business lives in SAP ERP, including personalized B2B business rules, and the eCommerce experience must conform to those busines rules 100%.

Let’s unpack those.

You need a beautiful B2C-style front end, no SAP ERP integration required

If you’re primarily looking for a great B2C-style experience, Adobe/Magento is a great alternative to hybris. The solution offers everything you need to compete online (as long as you don’t need deep integration to SAP ERP) .

Magento offers more control than Shopify or Bigcommerce—but with that control, you’ll also take on more responsibility. Building, integrating, launching, maintaining, and supporting your solution will require a team of Magento developers, either in-house or outsourced.

You’re probably wondering: Aren’t Magento and Salesforce competing for the same market? They are, and you’ll see that fact reflected in their costs. You’ll spend roughly $500k/year for either of these hybris competitors.

For organizations in this revenue bracket, Magento comes with one caveat: While its overall cost is similar to Salesforce, it’s only eCommerce. In addition to eCommerce, Salesforce also offers their powerful, flexible CRM platform.

Your transactions live and die by SAP business rules

You can achieve deep SAP ERP integration with any hybris alternative—whether Magento, Salesforce, or SAP hybris/Commerce Cloud itself. There’s only one problem: The cost of scoping, building, and maintaining that integration isn’t trivial, because none of these platforms was built to integrate deeply with SAP ERP.

You’ll have 3 separate software systems (ERP, middleware, and eCommerce), and each one will require its own team to support:

For organizations in the $300M – $5B revenue bracket, building and maintaining a custom integration to SAP ERP often becomes too costly and difficult.

Corevist was built to address this problem. Our solutions include prebuilt, configurable, real-time SAP integration covering every aspect of the user’s journey.

The Corevist Platform provides a personalized user experience driven by the customer’s unique business rules in SAP—all without requiring a 3^rd party to maintain the integration:

• 100% accurate real-time inventory availability/personalized ATP calculation
• Dynamic, 100% accurate contract pricing
• 100% accurate real-time credit status
• 100% accurate order status PLUS order history from all channels (EDI, phone, fax, email, eCommerce, etc.)
• 100% accurate invoice history/status PLUS capability to pay down invoices through self-service

WATCH PRODUCT TOUR

A hybris alternative with a net efficiency gain:

Corevist’s built-in SAP integration is unique among hybris alternatives. Because our integration is direct and real-time, we eliminate the cost, complexity, and liability of a system or process sitting between eCommerce and SAP ERP. This reduces your cost to serve and ensures your eCommerce experience is always 100% accurate, for each and every customer.

3. Hybris alternatives for organizations with > $5B in total annual revenue

If you can budget $800k+ for a fully customized frontend solution (plus additional outlay for a bespoke integration to SAP ERP), then both Salesforce and SAP Commerce Cloud/hybris offer excellent options. They’re both true enterprise-class solutions, offering best-in-class, B2C-style experiences with a large capacity for front-end flexibility.

With both SAP hybris and Salesforce, you license the platform, then hire dedicated resources to construct your solution using the appropriate functionality available in the platform. This path gives you the greatest power over your solution.

Of course, greater control means you also have to take more ownership of the technology stack. For both SAP hybris and Salesforce, implementations often total over a million dollars. After launch, each one will require a dedicated team to support the solution.

The Bottom Line: Best Alternatives to SAP Hybris

Here’s the best fit for companies in different total revenue brackets:

• <$300M: Shopify, Bigcommerce
• $300M – $5B: Magento for B2C, Corevist for SAP-integrated B2B
• >$5B: SAP Commerce Cloud or Salesforce

In a recent LinkedIn post, industry expert Andy Hoar discussed the reported sunsetting of Oracle Commerce Cloud. While Oracle hasn’t announced anything, it’s worth noting that Andy Hoar has confirmed this from internal sources, and the press has reported on the widespread layoffs in Oracle’s CX group.  

As Andy explains it, Oracle not only retired a great product, but left customers with some big decisions to make.

We get it—Oracle recently bought Cerner Corp., a medical records provider, for $28 billion. That’s a firm shift away from customer experience. Clearly Oracle has great prospects ahead, and it’s understandable they would pursue this new direction. Still, I feel bad for all those commerce customers if OCC has indeed been sunsetted. 

Here are a few reflections for organizations looking to do B2B eCommerce.

1. The larger the software portfolio, the larger the chance of sunsetting

The more specialized a company is, the less they can afford to drop one of their offerings. 

Likewise, the more offerings they have, the less they depend on any one offering. 

If Oracle is indeed sunsetting OCC, the decision likely came down to numbers. The shift to the medical records business must be a massive opportunity. It makes all kinds of sense from an internal perspective.

Still, I’m thankful that we’ll never have to make decisions like that here at Corevist. We do only one thing—B2B portals and eCommerce for companies on SAP. Our future direction and our priorities are clear.

To our clients, let me say this: Your success is our success. We’re not satisfied unless your B2B digital channel is thriving. Our portfolio is 100% focused on this. 

So what does it take to serve clients well with B2B eCommerce?

It takes total commitment and innovation. Which leads me to my next point.

2. A healthy eCommerce product roadmap needs 100% commitment from the provider

B2B eCommerce is mission-critical in today’s digital climate. As a market-facing solution, it comes under more intense competitive pressure than internal solutions like ERP or HR management. 

For merchants, B2B eCommerce literally does battle with the competition. It has to keep evolving. 

Here’s the unfortunate truth: A B2B platform will lose its edge if the provider isn’t 100% committed to driving innovation.

There’s a takeaway here for organizations looking to do B2B eCommerce: Look for providers who demonstrate a foundational commitment to eCommerce. 

Which leads me to my next point.  

3. Evaluate a provider’s priorities with care

While unknown to us, Oracle’s portfolio is likely a factor if they have indeed made this decision. Oracle got their start in relational databases, and their modern portfolio covers ERP, CRM, SCM, and many other technologies.

For Oracle, commerce is likely one pie slice among many.

But for B2B merchants, commerce is a business-critical system.

That’s why it’s best to choose a provider who demonstrates a strong commitment to B2B eCommerce. For this type of provider, B2B eCommerce isn’t merely a portfolio item, but the core of their business.  

Here at Corevist, we do nothing but B2B portals and eCommerce for companies on SAP ERP. This commitment makes a direct impact on our clients’ success. In fact, it’s why our clients are growing their B2B eCommerce revenue 1.4x the industry average. They get everything they need from us:

• Corevist Commerce Cloud (including prebuilt SAP integration)
• Cloud hosting
• Implementation services
• Ongoing product updates and support
• Growth consulting

With a provider like Corevist, there’s no risk that we’ll suddenly pivot away from B2B eCommerce. It’s our business, and we’re here for the long haul.

The takeaway

How important is B2B eCommerce for your company? 

If it’s a core part of your strategy moving forward, then you need passion, commitment, and deep expertise behind your solution (not to mention great technology). That’s what we’re all about here at Corevist.

No doubt about it, Shopify offers a tantalizing entry point to eCommerce. It’s easy to stand up and doesn’t require a lot of technical resources to maintain.

However, a challenge arises for organizations with SAP ECC or S/4HANA as their ERP. How do you integrate eCommerce to SAP?

While options exist for connectors, it’s worth interrogating your use case. Due to Shopify’s limitations (and the inherent limitations of batch-based connectors), a Shopify-SAP integration isn’t right for every scenario.

In this article, we’ll go over Shopify-SAP integrations — your options, what you need to know and alternatives.

Should you integrate Shopify to SAP?

If you’ve already implemented Shopify, it often makes sense to integrate it to ECC or S/4HANA. At the very least, you need to synchronize data for orders, products, and customers. You won’t be able to deliver every integration point for every use case (see below), but for basic situations, it makes sense to do this — particularly for B2C scenarios in which every transaction abides by the same business rules.

In a B2B scenario, syncing Shopify and ECC or S/4HANA gets more problematic. If you have customer-specific business rules like contract pricing or personalized inventory calculations, Shopify and your connector may not be able to support your complexity. We see this most often with manufacturers selling to dealers or distributors. In these cases, it often makes more sense to look for an alternative solution (see below).

Caveats for integrating Shopify and ECC or S/4HANA

While the market offers numerous connectors for Shopify and SAP, it’s important to understand the limitations of batch-based architecture.

For example, if you need real-time inventory data from SAP in Shopify, you’ll need to set your synchronization interval as low as possible — say, once every minute — to approximate real-time data. Yet because this is still a two-way sync, you’ll be using more resources to pass data back and forth constantly. Depending on how you’re billed, you may blow through your budget pretty fast. It all depends on your needs and how much data you need to pass (and how often).

What if you’re migrating to S/4HANA?

You’ll want to tread carefully if you have an S/4HANA migration on the horizon. The only way to integrate Shopify with SAP is to implement a middleware solution with its own duplicate copy of business rules and data. Because S/4HANA has some fundamental differences in its data model, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to transfer your Shopify-ECC integration to S/4HANA. Most likely, you’ll need a new implementation of your middleware solution for the S/4HANA environment.

In these scenarios, a platform like Corevist offers a much better solution for B2B use cases. Corevist Commerce Cloud includes direct, real-time integration that’s SAP certified for both ECC and S/4HANA. Because Corevist is architected with SAP at the core (and built and maintained by SAP experts), there’s minimal effort required to transfer your Corevist integration when you migrate — plus the Corevist front-end UX is totally unaffected by the migration.

Read more here: Should We Wait For Our S/4HANA Migration To Launch Corevist Commerce Cloud?

Options for integrating Shopify and SAP

Here are a few leading connectors for Shopify and SAP. We can’t vouch for whether these will work with S/4HANA. Most of them just advertise “SAP ERP,” which usually means ECC. Since the data model is different for S/4HANA, you’ll want to do your research if you’re migrating.

Note: Because each of these connectors is a separate system, you’ll need to duplicate all the relevant SAP business rules in the connector (and potentially in Shopify too, to the degree that Shopify supports that kind of sophistication). There’s a risk of increasing technical debt with any of these connectors because a change to SAP business rules requires a change to the same business rules in the integration platform.

APPSeCONNECT

APPSeCONNECT offers separate connectors for ECC and S/4HANA. They mention real-time capabilities, but it’s worth noting that this is still a sync-based architecture that requires duplication of data and business rules.   

eBridge Connections

eBridge Connections offers a connector for SAP B1 and Shopify, but it’s difficult to tell if they also offer one for ECC. These ERPs are entirely different, so make sure you do your research.

It’s worth noting what Third and Grove, a digital agency, says about eBridge Connections: “We have vetted or used just about every ERP connector in the Shopify ecosystem. In our experience and analysis, only the Zapier and eBridge Connections connectors are production-ready. We would not recommend any other pre-built connectors.”

Clarity Ventures

Clarity Ventures’ solution allows you to do real-time or batch-based data transfer. But it’s worth noting that in either scenario, you’ll still have duplicate copies of all business rules and data from SAP.

Alumio

Alumio offers a connector for Shopify and SAP ECC or R/3. (R/3 is the predecessor of ECC, first launched in 1992.) Like every other connector in this list, this one depends on synchronization. In the case of Alumio, you create the integration yourself in a graphic user interface. While it’s great that you can do that without IT resources working on code, you should do your due diligence and make sure Alumio will support your complexity.

Will a Shopify-SAP integration work for you?

In some B2B use cases, Shopify with a connector isn’t going to cut it. This is especially true for manufacturers who are using Shopify to sell to dealers or distributors. In these cases, it’s nearly impossible to replicate customer-specific business rules in the Shopify experience.

So how do you know if Shopify will work for you?

Here’s a quick list of features and functionality that require deep, real-time SAP integration in the web store. These features are difficult (or impossible) to deliver in Shopify, regardless of your chosen connector.

• Customer-specific contract pricing as defined in ECC or S/4HANA (including any product bundling rules)
• Customer-specific catalogs or picklists as defined in SAP
• Real-time error messaging to help customers fix orders that don’t conform to SAP business rules
• Only 100% error-free orders accepted (and posted to SAP)
• Mapping of multiple ship-tos, sold-tos and payers from SAP to a single eCommerce user
• Real-time credit status (so the customer can tell if their order will go on credit block)
• Real-time status and history from SAP for all orders, invoices and shipments
• Real-time dynamic SAP reports displayed in eCommerce

If you need any of these features in the web store, you might need to find an alternative to Shopify — preferably one that includes prebuilt, real-time SAP integration for B2B use cases.

Alternatives to Shopify in an SAP scenario

While manufacturers often use Shopify for a standalone proof-of-concept, they usually find it’s too limited to serve their dealers and distributors. After all, the platform wasn’t built for “true B2B” use cases. It was built for B2C, which it does quite well.

For complex B2B scenarios, Corevist Commerce Cloud may be a better choice. Our solution includes prebuilt, configurable integration for ECC and S/4HANA. It runs in real time with no additional system sitting between the web store and your SAP system. If you’re migrating from ECC to S/4HANA, you’re in luck — Corevist makes the transition with minimal effort and no change to the front end experience.

Corevist is different, too, because our solutions are managed. We implement and support the entire stack, including our market-leading SAP integration. This allows you to focus on your core business without taking on the responsibilities of a technology company.

No doubt about it, SAP Commerce Cloud is one of the most powerful eCommerce platforms on the market today. It consistently ranks high in analyst reports and serves some of the world’s biggest brands in B2C and B2B. For SAP organizations looking at enterprise-wide eCommerce programs, SAP Commerce Cloud is an omnichannel powerhouse.

But what about specific, B2B-only use cases with constrained IT resources? How can subsidiaries launch B2B eCommerce without the massive investment that Commerce Cloud requires?  

Here’s everything you need to know about SAP Commerce Cloud for B2B. (Click to jump.)

1. What SAP Commerce Cloud offers for B2B

2. Which B2B use cases are right for Commerce Cloud?

3. SAP-approved alternative to Commerce Cloud for B2B

4. The bottom line on Commerce Cloud for B2B

 

1. What SAP Commerce Cloud offers for B2B

SAP Commerce Cloud is the de facto standard for SAP clients. It’s robust, it can serve the entire enterprise, and it’s architected for scalability. On the front end, it empowers organizations to differentiate from the competition through unique user experiences — a capability that’s essential for B2C (and for B2B use cases that look a lot like B2C).

Here are a few highlights that Commerce Cloud offers in B2B scenarios.

• Context-driven services. This powerful technology can drive personalized product recommendations, segmentation and merchandising reporting. For B2B use cases with a strong B2C-style marketing component, context-driven services can provide deep personalization to increase basket size and customer value.
• Embedded PIM (product information management). SAP’s PIM allows you to manage product content and catalogs from a central location and disseminate them to the appropriate channels. This is helpful for eCommerce programs that rely on a unique user experience for competitive differentiation (see below).
• WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) storefront editor. SAP Commerce Cloud allows admins to make changes to the look and feel of the site using an intuitive interface. This is especially important for business cases that lean toward B2C, in which you may want to A/B test different aspects of the eCommerce experience without opening development tickets.
• Full omnichannel readiness. SAP Commerce Cloud supports an omnichannel approach to global commerce, with support for web, mobile, social, and point-of-sale integration.

2. Which B2B use cases are right for Commerce Cloud?

IDC’s MarketScape report on B2B eCommerce platforms describes the ideal use case for SAP Commerce Cloud (emphasis ours).

“Consider SAP [Commerce Cloud] if you are an enterprise looking for an all-in-one digital commerce platform that can handle complex enterprise requirements and can support both B2B and B2C business models or you use SAP for other CX applications. Consider it if your organization is primarily focused on differentiating by building a unique and highly customized commerce experience with a platform offering deep functionality.”

Differentiating based on commerce experience is essential in the B2C space. Consumers don’t have contractual obligations with retailers, which means the eCommerce experience must continually attract (and re-attract) buyers in a highly competitive environment.

In these cases, you can justify the customization required to create that unique experience — because without it, you won’t be able to compete.

But not every B2B transaction is so precarious. In fact, manufacturers often do have contractual relationships with their distribution partners. For these users, a rich B2C-style experience may actually get in the way of doing business.   

Consider these common B2B business cases. In each one, SAP Commerce Cloud may be too big for the business case.

• Your organization just needs a dealer portal where existing customers can place orders, track orders and pay off invoices. You don’t need to differentiate based on eCommerce user experience because your dealers have contractual relationships with you. You’re also not terribly concerned about attracting new customers — rather, you’re looking to create a better customer experience for your existing customers. And given those contractual terms, you really need to show personalized pricing and inventory to each logged-in customer.
• You just need to become ETDBW (easier to do business with) for your existing distributors. Your largest customers are using EDI, but the long tail (numerous small customers) are still placing orders via phone, fax and email. You need to reduce the cost of serving these customers so you can increase your profits. You don’t really need an amazing B2C-style eCommerce experience — you just need to capture existing business in an easy-to-use B2B portal. Since each customer has unique pricing, you need to leverage your SAP logic in the portal.  
• S/4HANA migration is forcing you to replace your B2B portal for existing customers. Your portal has rudimentary integration to ECC, and when you move to S/4HANA, you’re going to lose the integration. Rebuilding it for S/4HANA isn’t feasible, as the ERP migration has taken up all the oxygen in the room. You don’t need all the bells and whistles of SAP Commerce Cloud — you just need a B2B portal where your distribution partners can place orders, track orders and invoices, and pay their bills through self-service. (Note: Corevist is compatible with both ECC and S/4HANA, and there’s no heavy lifting required to transfer your integration from ECC to S/4HANA.) 

As you can see, SAP Commerce Cloud may not be a fit for every B2B use case. If SAP’s solution is a high-performance luxury car, these business cases just need a reliable daily driver. To extend the analogy further, these use cases need a car with a certain kind of motor — a deep integration to SAP ERP that enforces all the relevant B2B logic for each customer. While Commerce Cloud can support that with a third-party integration platform, that’s too much complexity for many IT organizations.

Another factor comes into play here. We often find these use cases at midmarket manufacturers, or in outlying subsidiaries or business units that don’t have a lot of influence over their parent company’s decisions. In these situations, local IT resources are already constrained and overburdened. If the business unit is going to do B2B eCommerce, they’re on their own — largely because the parent company has their hands full with other projects.

In these cases, SAP Commerce Cloud remains out of reach. But it may create too much heavy lifting anyway, given the fact that it doesn’t offer comprehensive SAP ERP integration out of the box.

3. SAP-approved alternative to Commerce Cloud for B2B

For manufacturers that are struggling to swallow Commerce Cloud, there is an alternative — one approved by SAP. Corevist Commerce Cloud is built on a direct, real-time ERP integration that works for both ECC and S/4HANA. Our integration ensures that every customer’s experience is driven by the right logic and data in SAP ERP. It’s how we deliver true B2B features without an additional system sitting between SAP and the commerce solution.

Here’s a small sample of B2B-specific features that Corevist offers out of the box.

• 100% accurate contract pricing for every customer, every SKU, and every quantity. Every cart, every order, every time.  
• Real-time product availability for every SKU, including ATP (available to promise) calculations where applicable, driven by customer-specific logic in SAP ERP.
• Customer-specific catalogs and picklists automatically driven by SAP logic. If you already limit what SKUs a customer is allowed to buy, you need a way to filter the products that they see in B2B eCommerce. The most efficient way to do that is directly leveraging the logic you’ve already defined in SAP ERP.
• Real-time credit status straight from SAP. This allows customers to see how their order will affect their credit — and whether the order will go on credit block or not.
• Real-time, error-free order posting to SAP. Corevist’s deep SAP integration only accepts orders that conform to the relevant SAP business rules. If the user finds a way to build an order with errors, Corevist returns intelligent messages to help them fix it. The platform posts error-free orders to SAP instantly, updating inventory quantities and the customer’s account standing at the same time.
• Self-service access to full order history and status, plus shipments and tracking numbers, integrated to SAP and major carrier websites.
• Dynamic, real-time SAP reports within the B2B eCommerce portal. Got a unique report in SAP that users need to interact with? Whether it’s customers or internal personas, Corevist supports dynamic reports pulled from SAP in real time.

Let’s be honest, that’s a lot of B2B functionality. To replicate this in SAP Commerce Cloud, you’ll need a custom integration with a third system that sits between SAP and eCommerce. That will create an additional IT workload that will grow more complex over time. It also introduces new potential failure points in your data landscape.  

If the powerful B2C-style capabilities of Commerce Cloud are essential, and if your organization has the resources to support that architecture, then you’re in a great place to do B2B on Commerce Cloud.

But what about those use cases we mentioned above? And what about organizations that don’t have the resources to support a complex, bespoke integration? How about scenarios that don’t call for competitive differentiation through a B2C-style user experience?

Here’s where Corevist comes in. Typically, these criteria indicate that Corevist may be a better fit.

• Entire business (or business unit that needs B2B eCommerce) does $300M – $5B in total annual revenue. At this size, SAP Commerce Cloud may require too much heavy lifting for specific B2B use cases — particularly if SAP integration is more important than competitive differentiation based on a B2C-style user experience.
• Comprehensive SAP ERP integration required. For manufacturers selling to dealers, distributors or other channel partners who have personalized business logic defined in SAP, integrating Commerce Cloud to SAP may be too expensive and challenging. Corevist’s prebuilt, configurable SAP integration solves this problem.
• B2B eCommerce will be used primarily to serve existing customers (rather than attract new customers). If the B2B eCommerce project is meant to improve the buying experience for existing customers (and improve profit by abolishing the cost of phone, fax and email ordering), then Commerce Cloud’s powerful capabilities for attracting new buyers aren’t really aligned with the business case. In these scenarios, Commerce Cloud comes with a lot of financial and technological weight that doesn’t map to the needs of the business case.

4. The bottom line on Commerce Cloud for B2B

SAP Commerce Cloud is a great fit for numerous use cases.

• B2C retail programs
• Enterprise-wide programs that require one platform for both B2C and B2B
• B2B use cases that require competitive differentiation based on B2C-style user experience (as long as the organization has the IT resources to support a complex SAP integration architecture)

In other cases, Corevist Commerce Cloud, an SAP-approved alternative, may be a better fit.

• Subsidiaries or business units that can’t get corporate support for B2B eCommerce on their terms.
• Midmarket organizations that have limited IT resources and limited appetite for the responsibilities that come with SAP Commerce Cloud.   
• Any B2B use case in which deep SAP integration is more important than robust B2C-style capabilities.

No doubt about it, SAP Commerce Cloud is one of the most powerful eCommerce platforms on the market today. It consistently ranks high in analyst reports and serves some of the world’s biggest brands in B2C and B2B. For SAP organizations looking at enterprise-wide eCommerce programs, SAP Commerce Cloud is an omnichannel powerhouse.

But what about specific, B2B-only use cases with constrained IT resources? How can subsidiaries launch B2B eCommerce without the massive investment that Commerce Cloud requires?  

Here’s everything you need to know about SAP Commerce Cloud for B2B. (Click to jump.)

1. What SAP Commerce Cloud offers for B2B

2. Which B2B use cases are right for Commerce Cloud?

3. SAP-approved alternative to Commerce Cloud for B2B

4. The bottom line on Commerce Cloud for B2B

 

1. What SAP Commerce Cloud offers for B2B

SAP Commerce Cloud is the de facto standard for SAP clients. It’s robust, it can serve the entire enterprise, and it’s architected for scalability. On the front end, it empowers organizations to differentiate from the competition through unique user experiences — a capability that’s essential for B2C (and for B2B use cases that look a lot like B2C).

Here are a few highlights that Commerce Cloud offers in B2B scenarios.

• Context-driven services. This powerful technology can drive personalized product recommendations, segmentation and merchandising reporting. For B2B use cases with a strong B2C-style marketing component, context-driven services can provide deep personalization to increase basket size and customer value.
• Embedded PIM (product information management). SAP’s PIM allows you to manage product content and catalogs from a central location and disseminate them to the appropriate channels. This is helpful for eCommerce programs that rely on a unique user experience for competitive differentiation (see below).
• WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) storefront editor. SAP Commerce Cloud allows admins to make changes to the look and feel of the site using an intuitive interface. This is especially important for business cases that lean toward B2C, in which you may want to A/B test different aspects of the eCommerce experience without opening development tickets.
• Full omnichannel readiness. SAP Commerce Cloud supports an omnichannel approach to global commerce, with support for web, mobile, social, and point-of-sale integration.

2. Which B2B use cases are right for Commerce Cloud?

IDC’s MarketScape report on B2B eCommerce platforms describes the ideal use case for SAP Commerce Cloud (emphasis ours).

“Consider SAP [Commerce Cloud] if you are an enterprise looking for an all-in-one digital commerce platform that can handle complex enterprise requirements and can support both B2B and B2C business models or you use SAP for other CX applications. Consider it if your organization is primarily focused on differentiating by building a unique and highly customized commerce experience with a platform offering deep functionality.”

Differentiating based on commerce experience is essential in the B2C space. Consumers don’t have contractual obligations with retailers, which means the eCommerce experience must continually attract (and re-attract) buyers in a highly competitive environment.

In these cases, you can justify the customization required to create that unique experience — because without it, you won’t be able to compete.

But not every B2B transaction is so precarious. In fact, manufacturers often do have contractual relationships with their distribution partners. For these users, a rich B2C-style experience may actually get in the way of doing business.   

Consider these common B2B business cases. In each one, SAP Commerce Cloud may be too big for the business case.

• Your organization just needs a dealer portal where existing customers can place orders, track orders and pay off invoices. You don’t need to differentiate based on eCommerce user experience because your dealers have contractual relationships with you. You’re also not terribly concerned about attracting new customers — rather, you’re looking to create a better customer experience for your existing customers. And given those contractual terms, you really need to show personalized pricing and inventory to each logged-in customer.
• You just need to become ETDBW (easier to do business with) for your existing distributors. Your largest customers are using EDI, but the long tail (numerous small customers) are still placing orders via phone, fax and email. You need to reduce the cost of serving these customers so you can increase your profits. You don’t really need an amazing B2C-style eCommerce experience — you just need to capture existing business in an easy-to-use B2B portal. Since each customer has unique pricing, you need to leverage your SAP logic in the portal.  
• S/4HANA migration is forcing you to replace your B2B portal for existing customers. Your portal has rudimentary integration to ECC, and when you move to S/4HANA, you’re going to lose the integration. Rebuilding it for S/4HANA isn’t feasible, as the ERP migration has taken up all the oxygen in the room. You don’t need all the bells and whistles of SAP Commerce Cloud — you just need a B2B portal where your distribution partners can place orders, track orders and invoices, and pay their bills through self-service. (Note: Corevist is compatible with both ECC and S/4HANA, and there’s no heavy lifting required to transfer your integration from ECC to S/4HANA.) 

As you can see, SAP Commerce Cloud may not be a fit for every B2B use case. If SAP’s solution is a high-performance luxury car, these business cases just need a reliable daily driver. To extend the analogy further, these use cases need a car with a certain kind of motor — a deep integration to SAP ERP that enforces all the relevant B2B logic for each customer. While Commerce Cloud can support that with a third-party integration platform, that’s too much complexity for many IT organizations.

Another factor comes into play here. We often find these use cases at midmarket manufacturers, or in outlying subsidiaries or business units that don’t have a lot of influence over their parent company’s decisions. In these situations, local IT resources are already constrained and overburdened. If the business unit is going to do B2B eCommerce, they’re on their own — largely because the parent company has their hands full with other projects.

In these cases, SAP Commerce Cloud remains out of reach. But it may create too much heavy lifting anyway, given the fact that it doesn’t offer comprehensive SAP ERP integration out of the box.

3. SAP-approved alternative to Commerce Cloud for B2B

For manufacturers that are struggling to swallow Commerce Cloud, there is an alternative — one approved by SAP. Corevist Commerce Cloud is built on a direct, real-time ERP integration that works for both ECC and S/4HANA. Our integration ensures that every customer’s experience is driven by the right logic and data in SAP ERP. It’s how we deliver true B2B features without an additional system sitting between SAP and the commerce solution.

Here’s a small sample of B2B-specific features that Corevist offers out of the box.

• 100% accurate contract pricing for every customer, every SKU, and every quantity. Every cart, every order, every time.  
• Real-time product availability for every SKU, including ATP (available to promise) calculations where applicable, driven by customer-specific logic in SAP ERP.
• Customer-specific catalogs and picklists automatically driven by SAP logic. If you already limit what SKUs a customer is allowed to buy, you need a way to filter the products that they see in B2B eCommerce. The most efficient way to do that is directly leveraging the logic you’ve already defined in SAP ERP.
• Real-time credit status straight from SAP. This allows customers to see how their order will affect their credit — and whether the order will go on credit block or not.
• Real-time, error-free order posting to SAP. Corevist’s deep SAP integration only accepts orders that conform to the relevant SAP business rules. If the user finds a way to build an order with errors, Corevist returns intelligent messages to help them fix it. The platform posts error-free orders to SAP instantly, updating inventory quantities and the customer’s account standing at the same time.
• Self-service access to full order history and status, plus shipments and tracking numbers, integrated to SAP and major carrier websites.
• Dynamic, real-time SAP reports within the B2B eCommerce portal. Got a unique report in SAP that users need to interact with? Whether it’s customers or internal personas, Corevist supports dynamic reports pulled from SAP in real time.

Let’s be honest, that’s a lot of B2B functionality. To replicate this in SAP Commerce Cloud, you’ll need a custom integration with a third system that sits between SAP and eCommerce. That will create an additional IT workload that will grow more complex over time. It also introduces new potential failure points in your data landscape.  

If the powerful B2C-style capabilities of Commerce Cloud are essential, and if your organization has the resources to support that architecture, then you’re in a great place to do B2B on Commerce Cloud.

But what about those use cases we mentioned above? And what about organizations that don’t have the resources to support a complex, bespoke integration? How about scenarios that don’t call for competitive differentiation through a B2C-style user experience?

Here’s where Corevist comes in. Typically, these criteria indicate that Corevist may be a better fit.

• Entire business (or business unit that needs B2B eCommerce) does $300M – $5B in total annual revenue. At this size, SAP Commerce Cloud may require too much heavy lifting for specific B2B use cases — particularly if SAP integration is more important than competitive differentiation based on a B2C-style user experience.
• Comprehensive SAP ERP integration required. For manufacturers selling to dealers, distributors or other channel partners who have personalized business logic defined in SAP, integrating Commerce Cloud to SAP may be too expensive and challenging. Corevist’s prebuilt, configurable SAP integration solves this problem.
• B2B eCommerce will be used primarily to serve existing customers (rather than attract new customers). If the B2B eCommerce project is meant to improve the buying experience for existing customers (and improve profit by abolishing the cost of phone, fax and email ordering), then Commerce Cloud’s powerful capabilities for attracting new buyers aren’t really aligned with the business case. In these scenarios, Commerce Cloud comes with a lot of financial and technological weight that doesn’t map to the needs of the business case.

4. The bottom line on Commerce Cloud for B2B

SAP Commerce Cloud is a great fit for numerous use cases.

• B2C retail programs
• Enterprise-wide programs that require one platform for both B2C and B2B
• B2B use cases that require competitive differentiation based on B2C-style user experience (as long as the organization has the IT resources to support a complex SAP integration architecture)

In other cases, Corevist Commerce Cloud, an SAP-approved alternative, may be a better fit.

• Subsidiaries or business units that can’t get corporate support for B2B eCommerce on their terms.
• Midmarket organizations that have limited IT resources and limited appetite for the responsibilities that come with SAP Commerce Cloud.   
• Any B2B use case in which deep SAP integration is more important than robust B2C-style capabilities.

B2B eCommerce offers tremendous opportunities for manufacturers. Whether the goal is revenue growth, increased efficiency or a more competitive customer experience, organizations are transforming how they do business (and what profits they see from digital channels).

But what should manufacturers look for in B2B eCommerce? Are all platforms created equally?

Absolutely not.

Some platforms will create unmanageable complexity for manufacturers. Others will allow companies to succeed online while focusing on their core business.

Here are 7 questions to ask as you evaluate B2B eCommerce platforms.

1. Will this B2B eCommerce platform allow us to roll out incrementally?

There are many paths to B2B eCommerce. For some manufacturers, a platform that requires launching the whole package is a heavy lift. How can you possibly dive into B2B eCommerce if you don’t have your product content together? What if your SAP ERP system isn’t configured to match your actual business processes for handling orders?

For an easy entry point to B2B eCommerce, manufacturers should look for a platform that can start with a customer portal and expand to B2B eCommerce in a future rollout. You want to give customers a portal for post-order care so they get used to digital workflows.

So where do you start?

Here’s the customer portal functionality you should look for.

• Self-service order history and status for all orders, regardless of how they were placed (phone, fax, email or EDI)
• Easy access to shipment status and tracking numbers integrated with carrier websites
• Full invoice status and history, plus real-time credit status
• The ability to pay off invoices online through self-service

Once you’ve onboarded customers to the portal, you can roll out B2B eCommerce on the same platform. Since customers already understand the value of the portal, there should be no struggle in moving their business to B2B eCommerce.

Hint: Corevist Commerce supports this progression from customer portal to B2B eCommerce. You can start with the post-order tracking portion of the application, then roll out B2B eCommerce when you’re ready. For real-life examples of this approach, check out these Corevist case studies.

• Emmerson Packaging
• Oregon Tool

Of course, an incremental approach is also critical if you need spinoff sites for multiple brands, languages or geographies. Oregon Tool took this approach with Corevist as well. We’ll talk about multiple geographies in Question 7 below.    

2. Which B2B eCommerce hosting model is best for manufacturers?

This question isn’t trivial. The hosting model you choose will directly impact your IT operations — not only in the project phase, but for as long as you use the platform. If you don’t have the IT resources to support your hosting model, your choice here can impact the business and your customer experience, too.

In other words, it’s not just an IT problem.

Here are the hosting options you’ll typically find for B2B eCommerce platforms.

Hosted

With a hosted solution, the manufacturer purchases licensing for the B2B eCommerce platform and secures their own hosting for the software. Typically, the reseller who sold the license will also offer hosting, though the manufacturer could work with two different vendors here.

With a hosted B2B eCommerce platform, the manufacturer will be responsible for all customization, support and integration — or else they’ll need to engage partners to handle these things. (For more on working with multiple vendors, see Question 6 below.)

Cloud-based software as a service (SaaS)

Under a SaaS model, the platform provider manages the software and makes it available via web browser. Manufacturers choosing a SaaS B2B eCommerce platform don’t have to worry about hosting or management — the platform vendor covers it all.

For manufacturers with limited IT resources, SaaS delivery is a great option for B2B eCommerce. It relieves your team from having to perform routine maintenance and respond to issues. In a sense, the SaaS model outsources the support, hosting and management for B2B eCommerce.

Hint: This is the Corevist Commerce model.

Cloud-based platform as a service (PaaS)

Under a PaaS model, the platform provider offers a cloud-hosted framework (platform) as a service. The manufacturer must engage developers to build out and maintain their unique B2B eCommerce solution that runs on this platform.

PaaS is a good option for larger organizations that have the IT resources to take full ownership of their solution. There are caveats, however. If you choose a PaaS architecture, you’ll want to make sure you understand how platform upgrades will affect your customizations. For more on this topic, see this post: 6 Caveats For Manufacturers Considering Salesforce B2B Commerce.

3. How much SAP ERP integration do we need?

Not every manufacturer needs comprehensive SAP ERP integration. As a general rule of thumb, the more generic your transactions (i.e. the less personalized they are for each customer), the more you can get away with basic integration.

At the other end of the spectrum, you’ll need a deeper integration if your customers have unique pricing, product or inventory rules that govern their transactions.

So how do you know where you fall? Ask yourself if you need any of these features in B2B eCommerce.

• Dynamic contract pricing based on quantity, bundling and any other relevant SAP business rules.
• Customer-specific catalogs or picklists driven by SAP logic.
• Intelligent error messaging (driven by SAP business rules) to help customers create error-free orders.
• Instant order posting from B2B eCommerce to SAP (so customers know they’ve claimed the inventory they ordered).
• Full history and real-time status from SAP for all orders, regardless of how they were placed (phone, fax, email, EDI or B2B eCommerce).
• Real-time credit status (so customers know if their order will go on credit block).
• Full status and history for all invoices, plus the ability to pay them off online.

If you need any of these features, you should think carefully about SAP integration.

4. Will this B2B eCommerce platform integrate with our SAP system?

B2B eCommerce platforms divide over the question of SAP integration.

Conventional platforms like Magento, Salesforce or SAP Commerce Cloud were built to stand on their own. With their own databases and backend architecture, they will always try to act as the system of record for all B2B eCommerce data — whether customers, products or transactions.

For manufacturers whose business depends on SAP ERP, that presents a problem. The B2B eCommerce platform will always require duplication and synchronization of data.

Arguably, that’s fine for data points that don’t change often (like the SKUs a customer is allowed to buy or related products within the catalog). However, real-time integration is required for things like inventory, dynamic contract pricing, SKU substitutions, credit status and instant order posting.

If you choose a standalone B2B eCommerce platform, you’ll need a complex, custom middleware integration to deliver these features. That gets pretty complex.

The alternative here is a B2B eCommerce platform that’s actually built for manufacturers — one that includes SAP integration. That’s the thinking behind Corevist Commerce.

5. How much IT complexity can we take on?

Manufacturers who choose a standalone B2B eCommerce platform should think carefully about SAP integration. One way or another, you’ll have to keep that standalone platform synchronized with SAP. You’ll need additional software and IT resources to make this work.

• Third-party integration platform — either iPaaS or middleware. You’ll need to license this software, implement it and maintain it.
• Dedicated professionals to manage both the integration platform and B2B eCommerce. You can hire these in-house or outsource them.

It makes sense to outsource support and management for your integration platform — but this doesn’t address the fundamental weakness of that architecture. When your customer experience in B2B eCommerce depends on duplication and synchronization of data, you’re taking on a lot of complexity. This complexity can directly impact customer experience if something goes wrong.

For manufacturers that can’t justify this complexity, a B2B eCommerce platform that includes deep SAP integration makes more sense. The key is to know what resources you can assign to your integration (and plan accordingly as you evaluate platforms).

6. How many vendors do we want to deal with?

By now, the picture should be clear.

Manufacturers that choose a standalone B2B eCommerce platform will need to coordinate with multiple vendors. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it’s a good start.

• B2B eCommerce platform vendors
  • Software licensing
  • Software hosting (if not SaaS)
  • Software implementation
  • Software support
• Integration platform vendor(s)
  • Licensing, hosting (if not iPaaS), implementation and support. You may need one vendor or several to cover these.
• SAP ERP vendors or internal resources (you’re already paying for these, but they do add to the number of vendors you have to work with)
  • ERP licensing
  • ERP hosting
  • ERP support

That’s a lot of coordination and data duplication. There are many places where things can go wrong. While large organizations can handle this complexity, other companies can’t justify it.

The alternative is a managed, cloud-hosted B2B eCommerce platform that includes SAP ERP integration from the start. This is the Corevist model, and it greatly reduces the number of vendors you’ll have to work with.

• A single B2B eCommerce platform vendor covers licensing, hosting, SAP integration, implementation and support. You have one vendor to call if something goes wrong.
• Your existing ERP vendors or resources simply continue managing and supporting SAP ERP.

7. How are we going to roll out in multiple geographies?

Not every manufacturer will have this question. But for those that do, the choice of B2B eCommerce platform has a big impact on the cost and ease of global rollouts.

If you need separate B2B eCommerce experiences for different brands, geographies or customer segments, it’s worth asking how a given platform will fulfill this requirement (or not). What will you have to rebuild in each case? What can you reuse? Is that time and money well spent?

Here’s where a managed solution really shines — especially if it includes prebuilt, reusable SAP integration architecture (as Corevist Commerce does).

If your different brands and geographies all reside in the same SAP ERP system (or if you have separate SAP systems that are templatized and very similar), then a solution like Corevist Commerce allows you to reuse your architecture investment, including SAP integration, in each new rollout. You can start with the geography or line of business that best reflects the requirements of your other segments. Treating that implementation as your flagship site, you can launch there to work out the kinks, then roll out additional spinoff sites for the other segments. The spinoff sites reuse your architecture while offering the control you need for each brand or geography.

Without a solution like this, additional rollouts will be more costly and time-consuming. You’ll have to build separate integrations and B2B eCommerce solutions for each segment. That creates a heavier lift — not only in the project phase, but for the ongoing life of the B2B eCommerce program.

This is one reason Corevist Commerce is built on a configurable SAP integration. We make it easy for manufacturers to stand up a global B2B eCommerce program on a single, scalable platform.

Shopify Plus Vs. Corevist

It’s not often that Corevist Commerce gets compared to Shopify Plus. Corevist is built for global manufacturers running SAP ERP, while Shopify Plus is built for retail brands.

That said, manufacturers sometimes come to us having used Shopify Plus in a complex B2B scenario—perhaps as a standalone proof-of-concept, perhaps as a permanent solution.

Either way, here’s what you need to know about Shopify Plus vs. Corevist. We’ll compare platforms in terms of these 5 questions:

1. What features do Customers want to see?
2. What features does the Business want to see?
3. What features does Sales want to see?
4. What features do Customer Service Reps want to see?
5. What features does the IT team want to see?

1. What features do Customers want to see?

Real-time inventory availability

SHOPIFY: Customers need to know if a product is available—right now. Along with pricing and lead time estimates, availability one of the most important data points you can give your customers (or not) in ecommerce.

While Shopify can interact with SAP via middleware, it’s not clear whether middleware-based architecture can provide reliable, up-to-the-minute inventory availability in Shopify. For an outline of the problem, see this post: Direct Ecommerce Integration vs. Middleware.

COREVIST: Through our direct, real-time SAP integration, Corevist Commerce provides real-time inventory/ATP calculations out of the box. Whether you offer every customer the same inventory quantity, or use an ATP calculation to allocate product, Corevist supports the inventory display that’s built into your SAP system—including personalized ATP calculations straight from SAP.

Self-service invoice payments

SHOPIFY: As far as we know, Shopify Plus does not support this interaction with SAP.

COREVIST: We support self-service invoice viewing and payment, right out of the box. See our solutions for more information.

Mapping of user accounts to their parent organization

SHOPIFY: Shopify Plus only recognizes accounts at the individual user level, and not at the corporate account level. This means that an individual user may not be able to see the orders which another user at the same company has placed, even though they both work for the same customer.

COREVIST: Corevist supports the mapping of individual users to the overarching customer account. This means that all users who work for a customer account (and who have the appropriate permissions) can see all order history, order status, invoices, etc. associated with their employer’s account.

Note that Corevist also supports mapping of users to multiple ship-to/sold-to accounts, using relationships specified in SAP, for complex B2B scenarios. This functionality also allows us to map Sales reps to multiple customer accounts in our Field Sales Portal solution.

Clear communication about order lead times

SHOPIFY: We’ve heard manufacturers ask for a popup in Shopify notifying customers when they’ve placed orders past the fulfillment cutoff time for that business day. Without this kind of clarity, it may not be obvious to customers that their order won’t ship out that day.

COREVIST: Corevist solves this problem with SAP integration. Whatever RDD/EDD you currently have set up in SAP, Corevist supports that process in the ecommerce store and allows customers to choose an RDD or see their EDD.

2. What features does the Business want to see?

Removing credit card transaction fees

SHOPIFY: When it comes to transaction fees, Shopify has some of the highest on the market. The exact amount you’ll pay depends on whether you use Shopify Payments or a third party payment gateway.

COREVIST: We don’t charge transaction fees.

Better integration between Shopify, credit card processor, and SAP

SHOPIFY: We’ve heard of issues with middleware systems not making the connection between a Shopify, a credit card processor, and SAP. This may make it difficult for Accounting, Sales, or Marketing to know which system to turn to (Shopify or SAP) to know the “one true truth” about business data.

COREVIST: This is why Corevist is built on a direct, real-time integration to SAP ERP. Corevist acts a window into your SAP system, showing the appropriate SAP data in real time, with no delays or data duplication. For example, electronic payments in Corevist process through your credit card processor instantly, and are posted to SAP instantly, hands-free.

The ability to delete a user before they log in

SHOPIFY: Little things like this can cause irritation for busy teams: You cannot disable a user at any time in Shopify Plus; rather, you have to wait for them to login at least once. This is not ideal, especially if you sent an invite to a user by mistake.

COREVIST: Our solutions support user deletion at any time, regardless of whether the user has ever logged in.

Better mapping of the customer organization

SHOPIFY: We’ve covered this above in the Customer section, but it’s worth noting how it affects internal operations. Since Shopify Plus doesn’t support corporate accounts with multiple individual users, it’s difficult to get a view of a customer’s total history/activity with you.

COREVIST: Our solutions support multiple ship-to/sold-to, as well as multiple individual users associated with the same corporate account.

3. What features does Sales want to see?

A solution that’s built for on-behalf-of ordering, from any device

SHOPIFY: It’s unlikely that a manufacturer would choose to use Shopify Plus for a Field Sales Portal. Shopify Plus is intended for customers (and B2C customers, at that), and it doesn’t offer essential Field Sales Portal features like multiple customer assignments mapped from SAP, or the ability to order on behalf of those customers.  

Cutting Sales out of the equation misses all kinds of opportunities for organizational synergy. If you’re transitioning an existing customer base to ecommerce, Sales is arguably your #1 ally in promoting ecommerce among customers. 

That means you need Sales on board from the start. 

COREVIST: You can get Sales on board, and pave the way for customer-facing ecommerce, by starting with the Corevist Field Sales Portal. The solution includes real-time mapping between the Sales rep’s account and his/her assigned customers–straight from SAP. It allows reps to order on behalf of any assigned customer, from any device, and gives reps full visibility into the account history of every customer they serve. You can roll this out to your reps first, then scale the solution to include Corevist Commerce for customers in Phase II (or beyond). 

4. What features does Customer Service want to see?

Mapping of user accounts to their parent organization

SHOPIFY: Already mentioned twice above—but here’s how it impacts CSRs (customer service reps). When a customer calls in with an order problem (as they will, since there is no real-time SAP integration for accurate pricing, inventory, etc.), CSRs have no visibility into the entire account history for the company—only the order history for that individual.

COREVIST: We eliminate this problem by mapping your ecommerce users to high-level customer accounts.

Order updates from 3PLs populated automatically to SAP

SHOPIFY: Without a direct, real-time integration to SAP ERP, Shopify Plus creates the need for a manual workflow when you have a 3PL (3rd party logistics provider) fulfilling orders. Without that integration, a CSR will have to read order fulfillment updates in Shopify (performed by a 3PL employee) and manually change the order status in SAP.

Obviously, this workflow is fine at low order volumes. But it’s not scalable for manufacturers who plan to do hundreds of millions in revenue (or more) through ecommerce.  

COREVIST: You can resolve this issue if you allow 3PL employees to access your Corevist solution. If you don’t want them to access the entire suite, we can limit their access to just the Order Tracking portion of the application. This allows them to update orders in SAP in real time without full access to SAP GUI.

See this post for more: B2B Ecommerce Access for 3PLs—Part 1.

5. What features does the IT team want to see?

A reliable, hands-free SAP integration that doesn’t need troubleshooting

SHOPIFY: In our experience, IT folks at manufacturers already have enough on their plates. They don’t need another bug to hunt down in a complex system.

Unfortunately, without a direct, real-time integration to SAP, Shopify Plus creates more work for IT. There will be order errors, manual updates to business rules in 3 places instead of 1 (Shopify, middleware, and SAP, as opposed to just SAP), and more.

COREVIST: Our solutions allow manufacturers to conduct ecommerce without IT pulling heroics. In fact, our real-time SAP integration allows 1/3 of our clients to run Corevist with no full-time staff dedicated to supporting our platform.

Moving forward: FREE case study

Want to see Corevist in real life? Download this case study on LORD Corporation. You’ll learn how this leading industrial manufacturer replaced an inadequate ecommerce solution with Corevist Commerce. LORD believed that if you could do something in SAP, that was where it should stay. Learn how Corevist delivered with SAP-integrated ecommerce.