What is a B2B portal and what are its most important features?

In the ever-changing business world, digitalization has become indispensable for companies. A decisive step in this direction is the introduction of SAP solutions, in particular business-to-business portals.A business-to-business portal is a special online platform that helps to facilitate interaction and trade between companies. It acts as a one-stop shop where business partners, suppliers and customers can communicate with each other, conduct business processes and exchange information.these platforms offer numerous benefits and features, and we will look at these in this article.

Advantages of introducing a business-to-business portal

Efficient communication and collaboration

Business-to-business portals make interaction between companies much easier. A central platform enables partners, suppliers and customers to communicate and exchange documents efficiently. This speeds up business processes and promotes better collaboration.

Automation of processes

By integrating business-to-business portals, companies can automate various business processes. This includes, for example, order processing, invoicing, warehouse management and much more. Automation reduces the error rate, speeds up transactions and saves time and costs.

Real-time data access

Business-to-Business-Portale ermöglichen es den Geschäftspartnern, in Echtzeit auf relevante Daten zuzugreifen. Das erleichtert fundierte Entscheidungen und fördert eine höhere Transparenz entlang der gesamten Lieferkette.

Customized offers

Companies can create personalized offers and prices for their customers. By analyzing customer data and behavior, they can develop targeted marketing strategies and build long-term customer relationships.

Extended reach and marketplace integration

Business-to-business portals offer the opportunity to expand your own market by presenting products and services on external marketplaces. This opens up new business opportunities and increases the company's visibility.

Better customer loyalty

Improving the customer experience is an important factor for the success of a company. Business-to-business portals enable a more personal and efficient customer service, which strengthens customer loyalty.

What functions do business-to-business portals offer?

• User management: The platform enables the management of user accounts with different access rights to guarantee the protection of sensitive data and ensure that each user can only access the information relevant to them.
• Product and catalog management: Companies can present their products and services in a comprehensive catalog. This allows business partners to easily search for products, view prices and place orders.
• Order processing: A business-to-business portal facilitates the ordering process by enabling business partners to place orders online, check delivery times and track the status of orders in real time.
• Invoicing and payment processing: Business-to-business portals often offer functions for electronic invoicing and payment processing, which makes the process more efficient and transparent.
• Customer management: Companies can manage customer data centrally to gain a better understanding of their customers and create personalized offers - and thus maintain customer relationships.
• Document management: Business-to-business portals enable the secure exchange and storage of documents (contracts, delivery bills, warranty conditions, etc.).
• Stock management: Companies can manage their stock levels via the portal and monitor the stock of their products in real time (this requires the connection of the ERP-Systems erforderlich).
• Integration of external systems: Business-to-business portals can be integrated with other company systems such as ERP, CRM and merchandise management systems to ensure a seamless flow of information.
• Marketplace integration: Some business-to-business portals allow integration with external marketplaces, giving companies access to a broader customer base.

What solutions are there?

In this article, we look at the most popular e-commerce platforms that offer complex enterprise solutions for B2B:

• Magento: Magento is an open source e-commerce platform that is available both as a free Community Edition and as a paid Enterprise Edition. It is world-renowned for its extensive functionality, flexibility and scalability and is one of the most popular and most expensive B2B solutions.
• Shopify: Shopify is a popular e-commerce platform that is particularly suitable for small and medium-sized companies. It offers a user-friendly interface, a large selection of templates and apps as well as easy setup and management of the online store, also has good B2B functionality.
• Shopware: Shopware is a well-known German e-commerce platform with three editions and a B2B solution (B2B Suite). It is a modular online store system with over 91,000 customers worldwide that was first released as open source software in 2004. You can read more about Shopware's B2B Suite in our article Shopware 6 B2B - the solution for your company.

Do you need help creating a business-to-business portal?

Our agency KennerSoft Services GmbH has been dealing with various e-commerce software solutions for years. We offer our customers various services relating to the creation, further development and support of a business-to-business portal. You can read more about this service here. We are happy to advise you on all these issues and offer the best solutions.