SAP eCommerce

A complete guide to SAP customer portals, eCommerce, and integration for B2B manufacturers

Manufacturers running SAP face a common challenge: how to deliver modern digital buying experiences while maintaining tight integration with SAP ERP.

Whether you’re evaluating SAP Commerce Cloud, third-party platforms, or customer portal solutions, the key question is the same. how do you balance user experience, integration complexity, and speed to value?

In this guide, we break down your options and help you determine the best approach based on your SAP environment and business model.

What is SAP Commerce Cloud?

SAP Commerce Cloud is a digital commerce platform designed to support complex B2C and B2B eCommerce scenarios. It provides capabilities for product catalogs, personalization, and omnichannel experiences.

For manufacturers running SAP, however, the real question isn’t just what SAP Commerce Cloud can do, it’s whether it aligns with the realities of SAP ERP integration, operational complexity, and time to value.

In many cases, organizations also evaluate customer portal solutions as an alternative, particularly when real-time SAP data and faster deployment are priorities.

SAP B2B eCommerce & Customer Portals

In the world of B2B manufacturing, SAP eCommerce comes with unusual challenges. For example, a manufacturer may have a customer with multiple sold-tos in SAP that all roll up to a single payer. This creates challenges when it comes to self-service accounts payable functionality within SAP eCommerce. What if those users need to see only the open items associated with their sold-to, rather than all open items associated with the payer?

When SAP Commerce Cloud Makes Sense

SAP Commerce Cloud is a great option for numerous B2B use cases. It offers powerful functionality, robust integration capabilities, and beautiful user experiences.

However, for some organizations, SAP Commerce Cloud presents a challenge. If you need deep integration to SAP ERP, and you need to launch fast, Commerce Cloud may be too much firepower. In particular, custom SAP ERP integration requirements may hold up the project and prove too complex and difficult to support after GoLive.

These organizations instead look for pre-integrated customer portal solutions that reduce implementation complexity and accelerate time to value or ROI.

So how do you know where you stand?

At a high level, ask yourself these questions:

  • Do you need ERP-driven features like real-time contract pricing, real-time personalized inventory (ATP), real-time credit status, real-time order posting to SAP without errors, or full order and invoice history from SAP, for all channels (including eCommerce, EDI, phone, fax, and email)?
  • Can you staff a full-time team to support SAP eCommerce? Whether you hire in-house resources or outsource this, you’ll need multiple FTEs dedicated to supporting SAP Commerce Cloud—particularly if you need deep ERP integration.

Why is SAP integration so essential?

Because the most important aspects of the customer experience, pricing, availability, ordering, and account visibility, depend on real-time SAP data.

What These Capabilities Look Like in Practice

Regardless of whether you choose SAP Commerce Cloud or an alternative approach, delivering a strong B2B experience requires exposing SAP data in real-time across key workflows. These capabilities impact how customers browse, order, and manage their accounts.

Core capabilities include:

  • “Real-time pricing and available-to-promise (ATP) from SAP”
  • “Error-free order submission aligned with SAP business rules”
  • “Self-service order tracking, invoices, and account status”

SAP B2C eCommerce

In an SAP ERP scenario, you have many options for B2C eCommerce. With fairly rudimentary ERP integration requirements (compared to B2B, anyway), B2C eCommerce leaves the field wide open.

Of course, if you’re an SAP company, you’ll want to check out SAP Commerce Cloud. It’s a world-class solution that stands with the best of any B2C platform—and, in many instances, actually exceeds them all.

The Corevist Platform | Full SAP Integration Included | Corevist, Inc.

Want to become Easier To Do Business With?

Check out Corevist Commerce Cloud.

Managed B2B portals and eCommerce with prebuilt integration for ECC and S/4HANA.

 TAKE A TOUR

SAP ERP VERSIONS

SAP ECC eCommerce

If you’re on SAP ECC, your eCommerce needs will depend on the complexity of your business rules. It’s best to think of this as a spectrum. At one end, you have a simple order-to-cash scenario in which every customer gets the same pricing and availability (barring discounts, of course). This is typically a simpler situation, either B2C, or a B2C lookalike scenario (i.e. B2B in which every customer looks identical as far as business rules).

At the other end of the spectrum, you have “true B2B” scenarios. These are more complex. Different customers may have their own pricing and availability that’s specified in contracts. Some customers might be allowed to buy certain SKUs, while others aren’t. Credit terms will differ among customers, and everyone needs visibility into real-time credit status.

All that data and logic lives in SAP ECC. That’s why a deep integration to ECC is essential for B2B eCommerce.

Learn more about Corevist’s offerings for SAP ECC and R/3 eCommerce.

S/4HANA eCommerce

As with ECC (above), the complexity of eCommerce in an S/4HANA scenario will depend on your business rules.

Simply put, if every customer gets the same basic price for every product, the scenario looks more like B2C. You won’t need a deep, real-time integration to S/4HANA.

If every customer gets their own unique contract pricing, product permissions, and credit terms, the scenario looks more like true B2B. It’s complex, and you’ll need a deep, real-time integration to S/4HANA.

Learn more about Corevist’s offerings for S/4HANA eCommerce.

NOTE: If you haven’t migrated to S/4HANA yet, you shouldn’t wait to launch B2B eCommerce until the migration is complete. You’ll miss out on the exploding value of B2B eCommerce. That’s why Corevist is built to follow you from ECC to S/4HANA.

SAP INTEGRATION

Future-proof integration architecture

How will your eCommerce solution share data with SAP ERP?

This question is essential to any SAP eCommerce project. Depending on the complexity of your business rules, the wrong architecture may saddle you with technical debt and systems that you can’t support.

Ultimately, that can create a bad user experience. For example, if your architecture depends on middleware  or an iPaaS solution (integration platform as a service) to duplicate and synchronize data between SAP and eCommerce, and those 3 systems stop playing nicely together, you may end up with an eCommerce store that can’t show pricing and availability anymore. That’s a serious user experience problem—one with direct impact to the business.

How do you get around this?

Look for an eCommerce solution that’s built to read and write SAP data in real time, no middleware required.

Here’s the prebuilt, integrated architecture that we offer in Corevist Commerce Cloud:

As you can see, there are only two systems total—your SAP ERP system, and Corevist Commerce Cloud, which reads and writes SAP data directly, in real time. This ensures that you don’t take on technical debt by launching a middleware solution to integrate SAP and eCommerce. Middleware-based architecture requires numerous full-time employees to support and debug. It’s much simpler to choose a platform that includes SAP integration out of the box. Bonus points if it’s a managed solution. (Hint: That’s what we offer with Corevist Commerce Cloud.)

Learn more here: Corevist’s SaaS Architecture.

Don’t Sweat Your Master Data

If you’re evaluating an eCommerce platform that’s tightly integrated with SAP, it can be hard to swallow the idea that customers will interact directly with your master data. You didn’t configure SAP for customers—you configured it to support internal processes and users. Is it really a good idea to integrate so tightly?

First of all, a deep integration is required if you offer customers personalized contract pricing and ATP (available to promise). It’s also required if you want to give customers real-time visibility into credit status (so their order doesn’t go on credit block)—and these examples are just the beginning. In a true B2B scenario, with B2B customers buying from manufacturers, you need that deep integration to handle the complexity of your transactions and prevent errors and manual callbacks.

The key is to engage a partner who can help align your master data with best practices. It’s okay if your master data isn’t perfect, or it’s taken on layers of configuration changes over the years. The right partner can advise you on what cleansing you need to do for integrated eCommerce—and what you can leave for phase 2, 3, and so on.

Learn more here: Don’t Sweat Your Master Data.

Integration Protocol: RFC Or HTTPS?

How is eCommerce going to talk to SAP ERP?

This is a crucial question. Your organization may have policies in place—for example, using only RFCs or only HTTPS to talk to SAP.

And of course, you’ll want to establish rock-solid security.

Corevist recommends one of several methods for connecting with SAP.


Get all the details here: SAP eCommerce Integration: RFC Or HTTPS?

SAP Integration: Prebuilt Or Custom?

It may be tempting to take an a la carte approach to SAP integration. Purchase this integration point, then that one, then another, from a vendor who sells them piecemeal. (Note: These a la carte integrations always place a third software system between eCommerce and SAP. That third system, typically a middleware or iPaaS [integration platform as a service] solution, will introduce technical debt.)

If you’re doing B2C eCommerce, or you have a very simple B2B use case, a la carte integration points make a lot of sense. Maybe you just need to bring orders over from eCommerce to SAP. Or you just need to sync product availability once a day.

However, if you have complex integration requirements, you may encounter problems with a custom or a la carte approach to SAP integration. If you need any of this functionality, a custom approach may not support your customers’ needs:

  • Real-time, personalized ATP (available to promise) straight from SAP ERP
  • Real-time, personalized pricing straight from SAP
  • Real-time credit status
  • Real-time error messaging from SAP for orders that don’t conform to your business rules
  • Only 100% error-free orders posted from eCommerce to SAP
  • Full order history for orders from all channels (EDI, phone, fax, email), not just eCommerce
  • Real-time status of invoices and open items
  • Self-service invoice payments with real-time account clearing in SAP

This list only scratches the surface of the integration points that a true B2B scenario requires. It’s far more efficient to choose a prebuilt solution that provides these integration points automatically, rather than trying to assemble a custom package.

UPGRADES AND MIGRATIONS

S/4HANA Migration and B2B eCommerce

These days, S/4HANA migration is on everyone’s mind. With ECC being sunsetted in 2027 (with extension options through 2030), companies are scrambling to define the future of their ERP practice.

It’s a challenging time for IT, as digital expectations are putting pressure on older organizations to launch B2B eCommerce.

For companies that are planning to migrate, we have good news. Corevist Commerce Cloud follows you easily from ECC to S/4HANA with minimal heavy lifting on our part.

This means you can launch B2B eCommerce now, delivering the competitive power that the business needs, without having to redo it all after your migration.

Read more here: The Ease Of Maintaining Corevist As You Migrate To S/4HANA.

Additional SAP eCommerce Topics

Manufacturers often encounter related challenges when evaluating SAP eCommerce and customer portal solutions, including:

– Replacing legacy platforms like SAP WCEM or ISA
– Implementing single sign-on (SSO) for customer access
– Managing credit, pricing, and sold-to relationships
– Enabling dynamic reporting and self-service functionality

Explore these topics in more detail:

Wrap Up

When it comes to SAP eCommerce, the key is to know your use case inside and out. Once you understand your customers and your internal processes, you can make intelligent decisions for the business—including the best way to handle your SAP integration requirements.

If you’re working with a B2B scenario, you need deep SAP integration, and you have limited IT resources to help, Corevist Commerce Cloud may be a fit.