The Reasons for Hierarchy
Product buyers for larger companies — often enterprise-level corporations with many locations in multiple regions or countries — may have a hierarchy of their coworkers that they need to create within your B2B platform. Such large businesses may need to differentiate roles and the access/buying privileges that each sub-user needs.
The latest custom user interfaces like this take the concept of a user dashboard and make it incredibly flexible so that each of your customers can make the space fit their company’s workflow better. Here’s what you need to know.
Who Is the Admin?
B2B eCommerce development can make the creation of multiple users within a single account very easy. Doing so provides the user with the opportunity to create access privileges for others within their company. This person can be considered the admin for the site’s user dashboard, an overall administrator who has control access over the business’ account.
Giving the admin the ability to create their own user dashboard and account profiles serves two important purposes. First, it relieves your customer service department from the tedious task of inputting the information the admin needs, as well as the back and forth that will no doubt follow when corrections need to be made. Second, it allows the admin to get everything exactly as they want it and the ability to change information as needed. It also makes them feel more comfortable because they may have confidential information that they may not feel comfortable handing over to your company’s customer service.
Invested Customers Stick Around
Giving your customers a custom space to create a company hierarchy makes them more likely to remain your customer in the future. Clarity can help make that happen.
Another important eCommerce solution for your B2B eCommerce platform to offer is the ability to incorporate information from CRMs, ERPs, and datasheets. Your eCommerce website needs to be able to import this information, the intention being, once again, to make everything as easy on your customer’s admin as possible.
Please note, these business admins will not have any admin privileges to the eCommerce framework or any modules built on top of it. Your customer’s user dashboard allows them to customize their own environment without having access to any other part of your B2B platform.
Reasons for Hierarchy
Companies have many roles that can be separated as different kinds of buyers. Users may have a financial role, a purchasing role, a sales role, a marketing role, etc. Each role may need to access different products or sections of your eCommerce website, and the admin who is setting up the business account might deem that it makes sense to restrict access to information. The best customer user interfaces installed during B2B eCommerce business development can organize access along many different lines. For example, the admin representing the larger business customer might choose the following allowances/restrictions:
- Access by location – Admins may not want different locations to know about the purchases the other locations are making. They might also want particular locations to have the ability to purchase only from a certain section of your site.
- Access by role – Admins can restrict what designated roles are allowed to see. This might mean all purchasing agents can see what other purchasing agents are buying, but a role that has only occasional buying privileges can’t see what those agents are buying.
- Access by individual user – Every user can have a different level of access that doesn’t match any other buyer. If the admin has the time to make everyone’s access different, make sure you have the tools in place to let them customize to the granular level.
- Access for approval– The only interaction that some users have with your eCommerce business is to stop by to approve purchases. This is often someone from accounting.
- Access by law– Some eCommerce customers’ accounts include information that has legal protection. To follow HIPAA security best practices, they must restrict access to this information within their own company in order to remain HIPAA compliant.
- Access without purchasing power – Admins know that not every employee should have the authorization to add items to cart. Instead, they may just let them browse a particular section or reference previous orders.
- Access with hidden information – Admins can set up user privileges for your site so that certain information is hidden. For instance, they may want someone to know what’s been purchased in the past but not the purchase price.
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Access and Restrictions
In each of the situations mentioned above, access can be defined however the customer’s admin wants. They could restrict access to order history, who else has access, how much they’re allowed to spend, who they have to contact to get permission to purchase, etc.
A great example of this is a medical practice. It could be an optometrist office, dental office, primary care physician, or hospital. Many medical offices have this multi-location need, with team members moving from one place to another throughout the month, week, or even during a single day. These team members need to be able to access your eCommerce platform to make a purchase or see the status of an order.
In this case, the business needs to allow buyers to set up a hierarchy determining who can see what data that has been entered into the user account profile and what orders have been placed. That’s because not everyone who has access to an account on your website is allowed to see patients’ personal health information (PHI). Some users who can access your customer’s site might have buying access, but only people with certain roles — those who have been trained in protecting HIPAA data — might be able to access previous orders that contain patient-specific information.
Clarity Can Make It Happen
Clarity can create a space for your customers where they have control over their own business, even if it’s on your B2B platform. Once a customer is set up and settled into their new space, they’re much more likely to stick around instead of purchasing from your competitors.
We’d love to show you examples of the hierarchical user dashboard options we can provide for your customers. Contact us for a demo or to get a quote.
We Can Help
Clarity has helped many businesses with B2B eCommerce development. Bring us your problems and we’ll help you find solutions.