SAP B2B Commerce
How do you choose a right-fit solution that works for your customers, your business, and your IT department?
Use this guide to map your company’s capabilities and requirements to the ideal solution.
THE CHALLENGE
Finding an SAP B2B commerce solution that works for your organization
For an SAP company, there are numerous paths to B2B commerce. But which platform, delivery model, and SAP integration architecture are right for your organization?
In this guide, we’ll cover all the important factors in this decision. We’ll also examine the sunsetting of SAP Commerce (on premises verison), SAP Commerce Cloud for B2B use cases, and alternatives like Corevist Commerce Cloud. Lastly, we’ll look at some successful examples of B2B commerce in an SAP ERP scenario.
Let’s look at the main questions to ask as you choose a solution.
1. Are you a “B2C look alike,” or true B2B?
B2B commerce comes in many flavors. On one end of the spectrum, you’ve got manufacturers selling industrial products to distributors (or to other manufacturers). These are products that consumers would never buy—partially finished materials, highly specialized machines, chemicals, and so on. They represent the “true B2B” use cases.
On the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got companies selling products that consumers can use—except they’re selling them to other businesses. Maybe it’s an office supply company that serves local businesses, a restaurant supply company, or a manufacturer of products that eventually end up in consumer hands.
Let’s call this second bucket the “B2C lookalikes.” Since these companies sell products on the consumer end of the spectrum, they tend to have two defining characteristics:
- Their products are less specialized and more commoditized.
- They need B2C-style merchandising to put their products in the best light.
- Their transactions are largely not personalized—every customer gets the same pricing, availability, and so on.
- Direct, real-time integration to SAP is nice to have, but not essential.
At the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got the true B2B use cases. While these companies may value merchandising to increase order size, they have other concerns that come first. These companies tend to have several defining characteristics:
- Their products are less commoditized—more specialized.
- Every customer has their own negotiated contract pricing, which lives in SAP.
- Customers may have personalized ATP (inventory) calculations, which also live in SAP.
- Direct, real-time integration to SAP is essential. B2B commerce needs to reflect all the complex business rules that are defined for each customer in SAP. Otherwise, every ecommerce order will contain errors that require manual intervention and follow-up with the customer.
- Merchandising is less important, as customers are expert buyers who know what they need when they log on to the portal.
If you fall into the “true B2B” bucket, Corevist Commerce Cloud could be a great option for B2B commerce that’s integrated to SAP. Our cloud platform includes prebuilt integration for S/4HANA or ECC that supports even the most complex B2B requirements.
2. What’s your company revenue size?
Simply put, SAP companies should look for B2B commerce platforms that are “right-sized” to their needs and capabilities. In fact, revenue size can have a significant impact on whether your organization succeeds with a particular platform. This is why revenue is a great “short-hand” metric to help you choose a solution.
SAP companies typically fall into two buckets here:
- $50M – $5B in annual revenue. If the organization needs deep SAP integration (those “true B2B” use cases), SAP Commerce Cloud may be too much firepower and too much heavy lifting. It will require significant financial investment, as well as significant IT resources to support it. Of course, the product is incredibly powerful—but it may be too much for an organization with IT limitations. An alternative like Corevist Commerce Cloud is fully managed, keeps SAP as the system of record, supports deep B2B complexity, and comes with built-in SAP integration.
- $5B+ in annual revenue. Organizations of this size typically have the resources they need to succeed with SAP Commerce Cloud in a B2B scenario. The company can dedicate full-time teams to Commerce Cloud. They can also staff or outsource a team to support the middleware integration layer that’s required. The investment in SAP Commerce Cloud makes sense, as the organization is prepared to utilize the platform to the fullest—and support it.
3. Can you support B2B commerce?
This question is closely related to revenue size, but it’s worth breaking it out. If you fall into that “true B2B” bucket—if your customers need a deep integration to SAP in B2B commerce—ask yourself a tough question:
How are you going to support a solution with a complex integration?
Organizations in the $50M – $5B range typically have limited IT resources. Your staff already have their hands full supporting SAP ERP and other business-critical systems. They can’t take on B2B commerce as well as a middleware or iPaaS (integration platform as a service) system to pass data between commerce and SAP.
Of course, you can outsource these capabilities, but you may end up with a “coalition of vendors”—several agencies, IT services providers, and so on—none of whom own your solution from top to bottom. This makes it more difficult to coordinate vendors and keep the lights on in B2B commerce.
If you do have the IT resources to support a complex solution, then you have many options.
If you don’t have those resources, consider choosing a managed B2B commerce solution that includes SAP integration. That’s the thinking behind Corevist Commerce Cloud.
4. Are you re-platforming from SAP Commerce (on premises)?
SAP recently announced that SAP Commerce, their on-premises commerce platform, is being sunsetted. The final release of SAP Commerce, release version 2205, will reach End of Mainstream Maintenance (EoMM) July 31, 2026.
For organizations that depend on SAP Commerce (on premises version), it’s time to look at a future-proofed solution. For many companies, that ideal solution is SAP Commerce Cloud. (Click here to learn more about migrating to SAP Commerce Cloud.)
For companies in that “true B2B” bucket—who also have limited IT resources—Corevist Commerce Cloud may be a right-sized fit. It all depends on your requirements (and how much complexity you can support).
5. Alternative SAP commerce solutions for B2B
Corevist Commerce Cloud takes a unique approach to B2B commerce.
Rather than starting with a commerce platform, then working backward to SAP, our solution starts with SAP—and works outward to commerce.
In fact, our clients’ ERP systems lie at the heart of their Corevist solutions. Our cloud-hosted platform doesn’t store or replicate any data, but reads and writes directly to SAP, in real time. This means every customer gets the right pricing, availability, terms, order history, and more—automatically.
It also means our clients don’t take on additional IT responsibility for B2B commerce. Our managed, cloud-hosted solution interacts with SAP ERP, which IT already supports.
It’s how those “true B2B” companies launch the B2B commerce solutions they need—without over-burdening their IT departments.
6. Examples of success
How is SAP B2B commerce working out in the real world?
Quite well—even for organizations with limited IT resources. Here’s a snapshot of what a few Corevist clients are achieving with Corevist Commerce Cloud.
- Oregon Tool – 325% growth in digital revenue through Corevist Commerce Cloud. Read the case study here.
- Emmerson Packaging – 97% reduction in customer service effort through Corevist Order Tracking. See the case study for more.
- LORD Corporation – $1.2M/week processed through Corevist Commerce Cloud. Read more here.
The key here is to find a right-fit solution—one that allows you to compete online without taking over your IT department. That’s the thinking behind Corevist Commerce Cloud.