User Management in B2B eCommerce: Registration, Approvals, Permissions

Before we get on, it’s important to understand the difference between B2B and B2C users because good user management involves accommodating the user’s decision-making process.

In B2C, an account typically belongs to a single user who makes their own decisions and shops for personal needs or pleasure.

In B2B, on the contrary, the account structure is complex and involves multiple business units and individuals; decision-making is systematic, and shopping is someone’s job.

User management in B2B ecommerce is the process of creating and managing user accounts. This includes setting up user roles and permissions, as well as managing account settings. User management is a critical feature for businesses, as it allows them to control who has access to their data and what they can do with it.

• After a company submits registration details to a B2B ecommerce platform, a qualification and verification process begins. The seller’s representative calls back to confirm the details and asks for more information to identify the client (or to ensure their solvency).
• After verification, the client is onboarded as a business partner. The user who initiated the request is identified as an administrator with user privileges to add other authorized users.
• The administrator logs into the business portal and creates user profiles for individual users and business units such as teams, departments, branches, and so on. The authorized users can be assigned different roles and have varying access levels and permissions in accordance with their job functions and responsibilities.
• Administrators (or anyone else with relevant permissions) can create order templates and manage orders and other users (edit user details and add or remove users).

• A typical approval workflow will consist of multiple touchpoints with checks from different stakeholders.
• The number of stakeholders is often directly proportional to the risk and value of the purchase.

A simple order approval workflow may include the following six steps:

• A user places SKUs in the cart and proceeds to check out.
• The user enters shipping and payment details on the checkout page and hits ‘Submit purchase order.’
• AI determines if the order qualifies for approval based on an assessment of value, number of SKUs, and shipping costs.
• Approvers are notified by email/push notification.
• Approvers act on the notification and approve or reject the order.
• In case of successful approval by all involved parties, the order is submitted.

Customers should be able to specify the rules and conditions that trigger additional stages of approvals. For instance, if the order value exceeds $15,000 or the number of items exceeds 100 SKUs, the people responsible for order management receive a notification for an additional check.

Each rule might need its own thresholds and approvers, for example:

• If the value of the purchase order is less than $10,000, it is automatically approved.
• If the value of the purchase order is more than $10,000 but less than $15,000, it must be approved by the purchasing manager.
• If the value of the purchase order exceeds $15,000, it needs to be approved by both the purchasing and the financial manager.

Your B2B ecommerce platform needs to account for such granularity and allow account administrators to set up rules and approvers from their dashboards without manual intervention from your developer team.

• Design an easy and straightforward user registration process
• Design an experience that works for each type of user (accountant, operator, logistics manager, etc.)
• Design for multiple jurisdictions and business granularity (department, branch, etc.)
• Design seamless approval workflows and interactions between approvers
• Allow users to manage access levels and permissions
• Give customers a way to manage orders and reorders

Needless to say, solutions need to be adapted on a case-by-case basis. Because of the diversity of possible scenarios, your B2B ecommerce platform needs to be flexible and extensible. Virto Commerce is both. You can design any module on top of the standard package.

Virto Commerce is an open-source ecommerce platform that’s based on Microsoft technologies. It is cloud-based and API-driven, so it is scalable and flexible by default.

Virto’s headless nature allows businesses to extend their digital ecosystem with multiple channels and tailor them to specific market requirements. The solution’s modular and composable architecture allows IT teams to create new functional components quickly and integrate them seamlessly into the ecommerce platform.

If you are interested to learn more about how Virto Commerce can help your business achieve outstanding user management and customer experience, you can schedule a demo now. Our experts are always ready to help!