This guide describes the out-of-the-box storefront functionality for B2B customers.
An organization (company | department) can be registered directly in the storefront.
A user that registers an organization is automatically assigned the administrator role. After registration, new users can be created by the administrator within the user management section of the My Account area and assigned specific roles.
The B2B storefront supports the following roles and permissions.
Role | Description | PURCHASE | MANAGE USERS | ORDER APPROVAL | MANAGE OWN QUOTES | MANAGE COST CENTER | MANAGE BRANDING |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Buyer | can place orders and quotes | ||||||
Approver | can approve orders of buyers | ||||||
Cost Center Manager | can manage cost centers of the customer organization | ||||||
Administrator | can manage all aspects of the customer organization |
The overview page of My Account contains a dashboard for B2B users. The roles described above determine the information to be displayed.
The following sections are available:
The section My Orders shows the current orders.
The section My Order Templates shows all Order Templates.
The section My Quotes shows all Quotes.
The section My Approvals shows an overview of the approvals. This section can be seen by Approvers only.
The navigation section of the My Account area contains the following information:
Separate sections based on user roles
The Order History allows to sort and search in the users orders.
The order search within the Order History of My Account has been improved by adding a search for order number or purchaser name.
The logo is visible for all logged in users of a customer organization.
Note
Currently, this feature is not supported with enabled page caching.
These contracts define reduced prices for a certain set of products and can be configured by the Account Manager via the Commerce Management Application.
In the storefront, the customers' users then have reduced prices (best price strategy) according to their contract(s) conditions.
The screenshot shows a product that is part of a contract with reduced prices for graphic cards.
Currently a revenue-based contract can be set up with an individual sales target defined. The line items in the shopping cart are automatically assigned to the contract, to which the product belongs.
In the storefront every business user can see all customer contracts.
A widget on the My Account overview page contains basic information for a limited number of contracts. An additional link leads to the list of all customer contracts.
On the contracts overview page additional information like the contract ID, type and validity period are listed.
The contracts detail view lists all contract information and shows the related orders made.
The B2B storefront contains a management section for users of a customer organization. Here administrators of the organization can create and manage users.
Deactivated users are not able to log in.
User budgets and order spend limits can be defined for each user separately. If defined, these values are used to decide if an order requires approval or not. An approval is necessary if one or both values are exceeded. If no values are defined, orders can be placed without approval. For more information please read the section Order Approval.
With cost centers customer organizations can track purchases according to their internal cost accounting and make sure purchases are in line with defined budgets.
Administrators of customer organizations can create, edit and delete cost centers as well as assign a cost center owner and buyers to them.
Cost centers can be activated and deactivated in order to adapt to changes in the accounting of a customer organization.
Cost centers can be managed in the Cost Centers section of My Account. Administrators and Cost Center Managers can create, edit, activate/deactivate and delete cost centers here and get an overview of the amount of orders and spent budget per cost center.
Cost center managers and administrators can create new cost centers at the Cost Center list. A cost center must have a unique ID within the customer organization, a name and cost center manager defined that approves or rejects all orders placed for this cost center.
Note
Only users with the role Cost Center Manager can be set as a cost center manager for a specific cost center. In addition, a budget can be defined for cost centers.
Budgets can be defined for the cost center itself and specifically for each buyer of the cost center. Budgets can be set to monthly, quarterly, yearly or fixed. Recurring budgets are automatically reset at the end of the defined period.
Administrators or Cost Center Managers can delete cost centers that are no longer needed by clicking on the delete icon in the Cost Centers list.
Cost centers that are not needed now but should be saved for later use or to see all orders placed for this cost center later on, can be deactivated and reactivated again by clicking on the on the deactivate/reactivate icon in the Cost Centers list.
Once a buyer is added to at least one cost center the selection of a cost center for an order is mandatory. Otherwise an order could be placed without providing a cost center.
Note
Deactivated cost centers cannot be selected during checkout.
When an order is assigned to a cost center the approval from the Cost Center Manager is required, regardless of the cost center budget or the user-specific cost center budget. The Cost Center Manager receives information about already spent total cost center and user-specific cost center budgets in context of the order approval. Based on this the order can be approved or rejected. The reason for a rejection can be captured by a comment.
Cost center approval is always performed first, followed by the user-specific order approval that takes the users order spend limit and user budget into consideration.
Note
A Cost Center Manager can approve own orders.
While there are more complicated processes possible, the current implementation is intentionally kept simple.
The current implementation recommends that the user is logged in before doing anything. After logging in, the user can:
The current implementation supports the following administrative tasks:
The order templates feature is intended to allow the user to collect products in a special product list to order them frequently.
Order templates can be managed (create, update, delete) in the My Account section. Order templates can be added to the cart completely. And the cart can be saved into an order template.
B2B customer organizations can use order approval to check orders before they are placed. The approval contains two checks, one for cost center specific approval and one to check orders against a users budget and order spend limit. Using the order approval is optional. If no budgets and spend limits are defined for users and no cost centers are defined for a user, orders are placed without approval.
Cost Center Approval is always performed first, followed by the user-specific order approval that takes the users order spend limit and budget into consideration.
Whenever an order requires approval due to exceeding the users spend limit or budget, an email is sent to all users with either the Approver role or the Administrator role. These users also see all orders requiring approval in their Dashboard and Approvals section of My Account. Approvers can either approve or reject an order. If an order is approved it is placed automatically. If an approver rejects an order a reason for the rejection can be provided.
Users can see a list of pending, approved and rejected orders in the My Account section.
It is possible to add multiple products to the cart at once by entering product ID and quantity via the Quick Order functionality.
Using the CSV import, you can import a customizable number of products in a single step, just by providing a CSV file.
The CSV file must use the syntax <ProductID;QuatityInteger>
.
5910874;1 3923636;2 8004558;1 7972533;5 4204060;1 M675251;8 M8540840;25 GiftCardBlank10;1
Find a sample CSV import file in the following zip file: quickorder.zip
The quick order functionality was also implemented at the cart page with the restriction of only one product at the time.
To use the OCI punchout functionality as a customer at least one user with role "OCI Punchout User" must exist. A first OCI punchout user can be created by the Account Admin using the My Account > punchout page. The OCI punchout user is usually not related to a dedicated storefront user. External procurement systems are using one punchout account for multiple employees. Therefore an OCI punchout user does not need profile settings like first name, last name, addresses, birthday and other. Only login and password are required.
The required information (login URL) to configure the external procurement system is displayed when at least one user with the role OCI Punchout User exists. The placeholders (Your_Login, Your_Password, Your_Hook_URL) must be replaced with the relevant OCI punchout user credentials.
The available storefront functionality of an OCI punchout user is only a subset compared to a regular storefront user.
Examples for eliminated functions:
The user is able to browse or search for products and add items to the cart.
The user can transfer the compiled basket back to external system. On the cart page the Checkout button has been replaced by a Transfer OCI Cart button. Once the user hits the button the system generates an HTTP form post request. The address of the post request is retrieved from the HOOK_URL parameter which is part of the original OCI punchout request.
The information provided in the Knowledge Base may not be applicable to all systems and situations. Intershop Communications will not be liable to any party for any direct or indirect damages resulting from the use of the Customer Support section of the Intershop Corporate Web site, including, without limitation, any lost profits, business interruption, loss of programs or other data on your information handling system.