Managing B2B and B2C sales on a single e-commerce platform

One day a private customer wants a product and pays by card; the next day a company wants the same product and negotiates over quantity and lead time. B2B and B2C sales on a single platform is an e-commerce setup in which these two customer types shop on the same catalog, stock and order data, each under its own rules.

Most businesses start with retail sales; as corporate demand arrives they begin giving quotations by email, keeping customer-specific price lists in Excel and taking orders by phone. After a while the same product’s price and stock live with one value in the store and another in the emails. In this article, within the framework of YazSis Smart E-Commerce, we explain where the two sales models diverge, what can stay shared and which questions need answering when building a single platform.

Where do B2C and B2B shopping diverge?

Even when two customers look at the same product, they buy differently. These differences require the platform to be built to serve both.

• Decision process: An individual customer mostly finds the product, adds it to the cart and pays. A corporate customer compares quantity, lead time and price scenarios; sometimes asks for a quotation, sometimes waits for purchasing approval.
• Price and campaigns: In retail, campaigns, coupons, points and discount scenarios come first. In corporate sales, the price changes by customer and quantity.
• Stock and lead time: For an individual customer, “is it in stock” is enough. A corporate customer wants to know how much is in which warehouse and when delivery will be made.
• Order flow: The retail flow consists of cart, payment and shipping steps. The corporate flow also includes quotation, approval and often additional document steps.

The cost of building two separate sites

These differences sometimes suggest building two separate sites: one storefront and one corporate portal. But when the product catalog, stock and order data are kept in two places, the same product’s information has to be updated in two places. One stays current and the other goes stale; stock is counted separately in the two channels and the same product can be sold to two customers at once. Because the team has to work in two panels, reports are compiled separately and the business’s total sales, total stock or best-selling product cannot be seen at a glance. A single platform aims to remove this duplicated work.

A single platform does not mean a single screen. Product and stock data are shared; the experience the customer sees and the rules applied depend on the customer type.

What is shared and what stays separate on a single platform

What is shared

• Product catalog, variant and category management: product information is entered once and read from the same source in both channels.
• Multi-warehouse and stock visibility: what is in which warehouse is tracked in one place.
• Order, payment, invoice and return management: whichever channel an order comes from, the operations team works on the same screen.
• ERP and accounting connections, shipping and payment infrastructure.
• Role-based administration and operations reports: total sales shows the two customer types together.

What is separated by customer type

• Price rules and campaign logic: coupons and points work on the retail side, customer-specific price scenarios on the corporate side.
• Quotation and approval flow: opened only for corporate sales.
• Which stock information is shown to which customer: for example, a corporate customer can also see quantity and lead-time information.
• Content in the interface: storefront and recommendations on one side, a quick-order and quotation area on the other.

Five questions to answer before you build

1. Who is the corporate customer? Who will see prices, without logging in or with an approved account? How will the customer’s identity be verified?
2. Is a quotation mandatory? Will all corporate sales go through a quotation, or can orders be placed directly up to a certain amount? This decision directly determines the screens of the B2B flow.
3. How will stock be shared? Will the two channels use the same stock, or will there be an allocation reserved for B2B? How stock behaves across the two channels should be settled before sales begin.
4. Which systems will be connected? Connections such as ERP, accounting, payment, shipping and marketplaces should be listed up front; for each one, the direction in which data flows should be written down.
5. Who will run operations? Will the same team or separate teams handle retail orders and corporate quotations? Roles and permissions are set up accordingly.

Set up around your sales model

YazSis Smart E-Commerce is not built to a ready-made template but around your sales model. It starts with a discovery in which the process, product structure, customer types, price and operations rules are mapped; then the store and the purchase journey are designed, the ERP, accounting, payment, shipping and marketplace connections are built, the data is verified, critical scenarios are tested and the system goes live. B2C and B2B sales are managed on the same platform in this flow.

If you want to manage your retail and corporate sales in the same data flow, you can start from the Smart E-Commerce page.