B2B eCommerce Back-Office Core Features

However, customizations and full synchronization with front-end features boost overall sales and business efficiency, allow customers to access relevant account information, promote marketing and optimize collaboration with third-party and custom-developed management applications.

Managing business associate relationships is a front-office job, but the information often affects back-office management across the organization regardless of whether a B2B company has limited back-office infrastructure or a huge retail and wholesale operation.

Depending on a company’s specific needs, custom integrations of core back-office features allow ERP, management apps and marketing efforts to synchronize through a sophisticated API layer to streamline efficiency and provide customized marketing and customer relationship management duties in the digital environment. Organizations that have limited back-office software can add the capabilities that larger, enterprise-level clients use, and larger clients can fine-tune their operations for integrating marketing, proprietary apps and even more automation into their operations.

Customizing core software features provides these business efficiencies:

• Managing complex supply chains for multiple products and in-house supplies
• Seamlessly synchronizing information across multiple channels including ERP and CRM software, marketing applications, accounting systems, B2B inventory management, POS systems and call centers
• Speeding internal and external authorizations
• Allowing customers to access, download and pay B2B invoices or interact directly with suppliers to negotiate bulk prices, check availability and research supply chain details
• Optimizing price quotes for large or custom orders
• Using information from product configurators to order supplies and authorize production and packaging
• Analyzing front-end information to segment customers and establish a lifetime value to each buying partner
• Handling credit card companies and other types of payment accounts
• Generating packing slips, shipping labels, backorder lists and real-time inventory counts
• Automatically assigning expenses against revenue such as commissions and consulting fees
• Reducing duplicated work by forwarding information to all departments and applications

The core back-office features provide these benefits and many more based on the type of eCommerce business, industry, targeted customers and geographic range of the business.

Without back-office integration and customization, any business faces extra work daily just to process the same transactions that automation can handle instantly. A clear example is needing to split sales information and enter separate figures in different databases. Depending on the level of online sales, this benefit of customizing sales entries is invaluable.

Most B2B companies don’t fit that simple business model, however, because they need complex integrations such as custom workflows, customer analysis, segmentation and personalization, multi-tiered pricing, multiple currency conversions, expanded payment options, expanded shipping and handling features, custom user interfaces and user experiences, drop-shipping capabilities and special ERP and CRM customization needs.

A B2B platform, as opposed to a software product, adjusts software to fit the business and automate operations. Platforms are built in modular fashion from “building blocks” that can be configured in multiple ways to handle business today and rearranged to meet new challenges and business opportunities. A robust API is the engine that provides access to all the endpoints of functions and features within the platform that transfer data throughout the system.

This layer is used to integrate with applications, open-source software, sources of business intelligence, offsite databases and internal operating systems to customize sales reports, user experiences, responsive design, special products and pricing features and hundreds of other business applications.

Account Management Features

Account management includes financial accounting of every sale, operating expense, commission, supplies for goods and supplies for the business. Many B2B companies operate with QuickBooks, QuickBooks Enterprise or Excel spreadsheets, and others use ERP software that’s divided into front- and back-office components.

Most ERP software integrates automatically with financial accounting systems in the back-office, but customers with less sophisticated software can still use financial data in extraordinary ways to manage their inventories, fulfill orders more efficiently, ship orders faster, run automatic credit checks on new clients and analyze their businesses to uncover expanded business opportunities.

Analyzing Back-Office Needs

It’s important to analyze back-office applications needs before customizing any software because there are many B2B business models with special needs such as Internet-only sales organizations that only need one-way integration and companies with brick-and-mortar and online sales, which require two-way integration. An example of the special needs of a company that offers brick-and-mortar sales might be the imperative of keeping the store stocked for local customers.

Customization can establish the parameters of what’s available online and what’s not in real-time or when to override the formula to satisfy a valued customer. Regardless of business model, B2B back-office core features fall into four necessary functions: account management, purchase history, B2B invoicing, and sales reporting.

The incredible array of business applications that these basic functions support include marketing, CRM, vendor management, Human Resources departments, reputation management, risk management, reward and incentive strategies, physical operations, payroll operations and many others.

ERP and CRM Systems

Regardless of system software, customizing an online B2B eCommerce operation generates many challenges to ensure that shipping, product information, real-time inventory counts and customer-specific pricing information are always available to customers and staff, regardless of which mobile device they use, while preventing unauthorized access and data breaches. Large companies even face internal disconnects and barriers that customizing software eliminates.

Companies can generate reports and manipulate data in custom ways to track and monitor sales by any benchmarks to address areas of concern, find new market opportunities, manage specific projects, improve financial compliance and drive improvements. Custom features include enhancing customer service by tracking billable data and relationships and automating core analyses of order-to-fulfillment, lead-to-data and B2B procurement-to-payment processes.

Payroll and HR Management

Many companies use outside vendors or separate software to manage payroll and/or HR to simplify and error-proof tax- and report-filing processes. Some companies hire temporary workers, consultants, independent contractors or outside staffing agencies, but these de facto staff members must also be managed, and be able to access their employment records and relationship histories with the company. Customizations allow such features as self-management of records and onboarding to facilitate better HR management.

Custom Cloud Integrations

Integrating with cloud technology changes the way that many B2B companies operate by reducing the need for on-site back-ups and allowing stakeholders to access information from any authorized device or portal 24/7/365. B2B companies with customized core features can automatically update cloud storage and take advantage of the concept of only needing to enter financial information once.

Managing Employees and Resources

B2B companies can ignite sales by using product collaborators, but this often generates problems for the back-office staff such as pricing special orders, getting approvals from various stakeholders, ordering products and materials or locating new vendors.

Supply Chain Management

Special features allow managers to compare POS intelligence, BI, vendor prices and options, supply chain logistics and customs-clearance needs. Companies with physical-location sales or different websites can compare reports, inventory, supply chain characteristics that affect customer buying decisions and other metrics. Custom supply chain management tools include container management, landing costs, warehousing strategies, logistics and storing options when shipments are idle, managing distributors and customs duties and many other B2B needs.

Electronic Discovery

Employee activity might occasionally be monitored by law enforcement or staff to guarantee regulatory compliance and ethical behavior, find evidence and track data breaches to their source for HIPAA compliance. Security is a big concern for B2B companies, and having core tracking tools for eDiscovery complies with regulatory agency guidelines, strengthens internal security and provides electronic trails for evidence in criminal proceedings.

Maximizing Profitability

The key area of concern for any B2B company is profitability, and managing inventory, reducing theft and waste, getting better prices for products and materials and negotiating better deals are key ways to maximize profits. Custom management for business purchases can include automatic profit projections broken down by product, materials, vendors, suppliers and other benchmarks to enable better control of costs. Another key area of profitability where customizations are important is covered in the next section on invoice management and accounts receivable.

If you have an ERP system, we can fix any bugs or integration problems you’re having and recommend new custom features that will save time and money, optimize marketing efforts and increase customer loyalty. Call or contact B2B eCommerce & Integrations for a consultation or a price quote for a simple fix or major overhaul.