Considering B2B e-commerce platforms and trying to narrow down your shortlist of e-commerce software vendors? You’ve come to the right place. Continue reading to learn more about the different types of B2B e-commerce solutions and which best fits your business needs.
Looking at all the B2B e-commerce solutions on the market? Wondering which is right for you and your business? In the last few years, more and more e-commerce platforms have become available. This also makes it more difficult to understand which is right for your business.
We put together this guide using our 20+ years of experience in the B2B e-commerce market for manufacturers, distributors, retailers and wholesalers out there looking for an e-commerce site.
There are a lot of e-commerce vendors out there, and they all claim to be the best. There’s no doubt that each one is the best for someone, but the real question is: Which e-commerce software is the best for you? It all depends on your industry, business size, goals and needs. We want to help you find the perfect solution for your business, even if it’s not ours.
Here’s an overview of what we consider to be the top 7 e-commerce platforms for B2B online businesses:
Sana Commerce Cloud (SCC) is an ERP-integrated e-commerce platform that was built specifically to handle the complexity of the B2B use case. It’s an ideal choice for manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers looking for an e-commerce platform comes with a pre-built integration for Dynamics or SAP ERPs.
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Adobe Commerce, formerly known as Magento, is a popular e-commerce solution known for its CMS and design capabilities. It has acquired even more functionality due in part to the move with Adobe, but is still most popular with organizations with extensive B2C or design requirements.
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SAP Commerce Cloud is favored by SAP-savvy enterprises but might not suit SMBs due to high costs and complexity. Offering robust B2B/B2C features and global reach, it often demands lengthy partner-involved implementation (18 months), increasing expenses and intricacy. Being suite-centric limits API flexibility and exit adaptability, locking businesses into SAP ecosystem.
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Microsoft D365 Commerce, an omnichannel e-commerce solution in the Dynamics family, integrates with Microsoft ERP for streamlined operations. While it now emphasizes B2B features, it remains fundamentally B2C-oriented, bridging back-end to web store.
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Shopify is widely known for their mainstream commerce offering to B2C sellers. Their B2B offering is called “Shopify Plus”. It offers a wide range of features and support, making it a leading choice for entrepreneurs and small businesses.
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BigCommerce is an open-source e-commerce platform that can function well across various sectors and industries.
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Intershop is a comprehensive e-commerce platform that offers a range of features and solutions for businesses looking to establish and grow their online presence. With its long-standing expertise in the e-commerce industry, Intershop caters to both B2B and B2C companies.
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What are the different types of B2B e-commerce software? Below, you’ll find an overview of the four main types of e-commerce software. When comparing B2B e-commerce platforms, it’s important to understand the different types of software out there to see which one is right for your full tech stack and business needs.
Example: Sana Commerce
Integrated e-commerce solutions are built to turn the ERP into an engine running an online store. Using the data from the ERP along with the e-commerce site, it becomes possible to create more relevant, engaging and personalized online experiences.
This software integrates front- and back-office systems to provide a unified business environment that is much more easily scalable, customizable and extensible, in addition to providing time-saving automation functionality.
It gives customer service reps a single view of customers across all channels. Orders from multiple channels and inventory are all managed from one system and can efficiently be fulfilled from that same system. Even a customer’s order history can be used to provide personalized and relevant offers.
Example: Magento, Shopify
This type of application is used to stand up the front-end web store but has its own table structure. This means all the information used online has to be created in that system (e.g. product information, product attributes, pricing and inventory). Likewise, orders captured online from the front-end web store write back to the shopping cart platform, which again, is separate from any back-office system.
This type of software is heavily focused on B2C, which is less complex than B2B. So when it comes to B2B sales, these applications often lack the functionality needed for complex ordering, for example, adequate roles, rights or authorizations for placing orders as a business.
Example: eBridge Connections
Connectors are the third party application used to sync a web store with an ERP system. While these applications create a bi-directional flow of information between two systems, this typically occurs at a pre-defined interval, meaning information is not truly updated in real-time. Data is also replicated and synchronized rather than available in real-time, directly from the ERP.
Example: k-eCommerce
These applications include a tool to manage the customer-facing front-end web store, so CMS and other e-commerce functionality like capturing web orders or promotions. They also include a connector (built in-house) to sync information to and from the ERP system.
This type of application does not offer a true real-time synchronization. On top of that, data replication still has to occur. And in some instances, just like with shopping cart applications, certain data that already resides in the ERP has to be manually recreated in the application due to limitations of the connector.
At a glance, there might not seem to be many differences between B2C and B2B e-commerce. After all, doesn’t it boil down to simply selling products through a web store?
While that is true in essence, the reality is more complex. The basic needs that a web store has to meet are the same for consumers and professional buyers alike: They need an online sales channel that’s available 24/7. But that’s where the similarities stop.
B2B companies often offer long-standing customers personalized pricing, discounts, and more. Additionally, orders are larger than a normal consumer’s and there can be way more complexity when it comes to shipping and and stock levels.
For these reasons, it’s important that you have a solution that works with your existing tech stack. This will remove the complexity for your customers and employees and enable you and your teams to work more efficiently.
Unlike mainstream e-commerce solutions, Sana Commerce Cloud is truly integrated with SAP and Microsoft Dynamics. There is no need for middleware, and data syncs bi-directionally, leaving you with a single source of truth and eliminating traditional e-commerce errors. Sana Commerce Cloud was built for the B2B use case, with tailored features that can transform your complex business processes into winning results.
The e-commerce software market is extremely saturated, and pricing varies widely. For B2B organizations, a price range of $5000 to $55,000 for a project that includes design, development and implementation can be expected. This can further vary depending on the types of customizations and functionalities you might require for your web store.
Self-hosted e-commerce projects and e-commerce websites that are not ERP-integrated run the risk of incurring some sizable added costs to connect systems. For instance, you might need to pay a large implementation fee (and potentially recurring fee) for any middleware or connectors that are needed to unify your e-commerce solution ecosystem (in addition to those of the software itself).
With an ERP-integrated solution*, all changes to your ERP data appear immediately in your web store and vice versa. Our solution is built into your ERP and does not rely on third-party connectors or middleware.
Sana Commerce Cloud processes all your information in one place, eliminating redundancies, inconsistencies and the need to manually maintain more than one set of business data.
* We only integrate with Microsoft Dynamics & SAP ERPs.
