I’m searching for an existing B2B solution that can handle shopping cart management and integrate with our ERP system for stock tracking. We need a platform that offers a business customer portal with these key features:
Allow business clients to handle their own shopping carts
Support advance ordering with clear visibility of what’s in stock versus what needs to be ordered ahead
Enable flexible purchasing through our current ecommerce platform based on product availability
Has anyone found platforms that include these capabilities right out of the box?
Background: We’re running on an ecommerce platform and previously had a custom solution built by an outside developer for our business customer interface. This handled cart storage and wishlist features, plus advance ordering capabilities. Now we want to move away from this custom solution since we can’t verify if it has the right API connections for our ERP integration using middleware tools.
We want to handle stock management directly in our ERP by monitoring what items business customers have reserved in their carts, plus give our internal team admin access to modify those carts when needed.
It seems like there should be ready-to-use solutions available instead of custom development, especially ones with proper API support.
BigCommerce Enterprise worked great for us in a similar setup. Their B2B Edition has cart persistence, customer group pricing, and quote management - sounds like exactly what you’re looking for. API docs are solid and we hooked it up to NetSuite pretty smoothly. What really won us over was the built-in pre-order handling and inventory allocation. You can auto-reserve stock when items sit in business customer carts, and your team can edit customer carts directly from the admin panel. Took us about 3 months to get everything running including the ERP integration, but way faster than rebuilding our custom mess. Middleware options are flexible too.
magento commerce is pretty good for b2b stuff. they have shared carts, requisition lists, etc. stock reservations work well with plenty of ERPs using their API. I’ve used it for about 2 yrs and it’s way better than custom coding.
We had the exact same issues last year. Ended up going with Shopify Plus and their B2B features - it covers everything you’re asking about. Cart persistence, admin editing, the works.
The ERP integration was surprisingly easy through their REST API. We hooked it up to SAP for real-time inventory and stock reservation works perfectly when people add stuff to their carts. Pre-order module shows availability status upfront so customers can order ahead when things are out of stock.
Took us 4 months to get it running, but that’s mostly because we spent forever testing and training our team. Their API docs are solid and our middleware handled everything smoothly. Way more reliable than the custom mess we had before, and barely any maintenance needed.