Preparing a B2B ordering portal: the questions to ask before choosing a platform

Who orders, and on whose behalf?

A B2B account is rarely one person. Behind a single customer there is often a buyer, an approver, someone in accounting and sometimes several branches. The portal has to reflect that structure, or your customers will keep ordering by email.

Questions to ask

• What types of customers do you serve: retailers, distributors, national accounts, contractors, institutions?
• Does an account have several branches, shipping addresses or cost centres?
• Who can place an order, who has to approve it and who only views pricing or invoices?
• Do your sales reps order on behalf of customers? Do they need to see their portfolio's history?
• How does a new customer get access: invitation, request approved by your team or manual setup?

Your commercial terms

This is often the most underestimated part. In B2B, the price shown almost always depends on the customer, the quantity or a contract. On top of that come minimums, payment terms and shipping rules specific to each account.

Questions to ask

• Do you have price lists by customer, by customer group or by contract?
• Do you use quantity price breaks? Are they calculated per line, per order or over a period?
• Do you require order minimums or pack multiples (box, case, pallet)?
• Which payment terms do you offer: net terms, credit limits, credit card, payment at checkout?
• Do some customers have specific tax treatment or negotiated shipping fees?

Where does each rule live today?

For each rule, note where it currently lives: in the ERP, in a spreadsheet, in a contract or in a sales rep's memory. A rule that is well documented in the ERP can be carried over; a rule applied case by case has to be decided first.

The catalogue each customer should see

A B2B portal exposes the quality of your product data. Professional buyers look for codes, units of measure and accurate spec sheets. Incomplete data generates calls to customer service instead of orders.

• Do all customers see all products, or are some catalogues restricted by contract, region or brand?
• What does the buyer need to see: manufacturer part number, spec sheet, equivalents, lead times?
• Do you sell by the unit, the box or the pallet? How are conversions handled?
• Where is product data maintained today (ERP, PIM, spreadsheets) and by whom?
• Does product content exist in both English and French, or will it need translation?

Plan time to clean up and complete your data before launch. This work often takes longer than configuring the platform itself.

Order flows

Professional buyers mostly reorder what they already know. They want speed, quick access to past orders and delivery tracking without having to call.

• Quick order by product code or file upload.
• Reorder from history or from a saved list.
• Quote request for large quantities or off-catalogue products.
• Recurring or scheduled orders.
• Orders placed by a sales rep on the customer's behalf.
• Tracking of orders, partial shipments, backorders and invoices.

Start from your current channels

Look at how orders come in today: email, phone, EDI, sales reps. Each channel exists for a reason. The portal won't replace them all at once, so decide which ones it should absorb first and which will stay in place.

Connections to existing systems

The portal doesn't stand alone. It has to receive data from your systems and send orders back to them. The first step is to map those exchanges.

For each exchange, specify whether it must happen in real time or can be delayed, and what happens if a system is unavailable. Also ask each vendor whether they offer an existing, maintained connector for your specific systems or whether the integration has to be built, and who will maintain it.

Internal responsibilities

A B2B portal is a business project, not just an IT project. Each team owns part of the rules and will have to maintain them after launch.

Name one internal owner for the portal who can settle trade-offs between teams. Decide early how your sales reps will be credited for orders placed online: this directly affects how willing they are to recommend the portal to their customers.

Evaluation criteria

Turn your answers into concrete scenarios and ask vendors to demonstrate them. A useful demo shows your cases, not a generic walkthrough.

• Have vendors demo your three most complex scenarios, using data representative of your catalogue and customers.
• For each commercial rule, ask whether it is handled natively, through a third-party extension or through custom development.
• For each system to connect, ask whether there is a connector, a documented API, or whether the integration must be built.
• Check who can change a price list or a catalogue without involving a developer.
• Look at the buyer experience on a phone and on a tablet.
• Get the total cost broken down: subscription, setup, integrations, extensions and maintenance.
• Ask how a phased rollout works, for example one customer group at a time.

Warning signs

• A demo that never uses your rules or your data.
• Answers like "that's possible" without saying how, by whom or at what cost.
• Essential B2B rules spread across several extensions from different vendors that will have to be maintained together.

Where Shopflow fits

According to the description of its B2B engine, Shopflow offers customer-specific pricing, private catalogues, approval workflows, customer hierarchies and credit and payment terms management, with inventory shared between B2B and B2C sales. These capabilities don't replace the scoping work in this guide: use the checklist below to test them against your own scenarios in a conversation with the team.