Your dealers call
to ask their own price.
What does this cost for us, has that order shipped, where is the latest delivery note. Business customers have their own price agreements, several people per company and their own order history, and those three things do not fit in an email. A B2B portal puts them behind one login, with the data from the systems you already run.
Why companies start on this.
Prices per customer in a spreadsheet
Tiers, discount groups and exceptions live in a file one person maintains. Every quote starts with looking up which agreement applies.
Several people per company
The buyer, the warehouse and the finance desk all want to see something different. One shared login with one password is the current solution.
Order status goes through the phone
The information is in your ERP, but your partner cannot reach it. So they call you, and someone looks it up.
Documents get lost
Delivery notes, certificates, price lists and manuals drift around mailboxes. Nobody knows which version is the latest.
Reordering costs you work
A repeat order from a regular dealer should place itself. Right now someone retypes it out of an email.
Growth means more looking things up
Twice as many dealers is currently twice as much manual work. That does not scale with your revenue.
From first conversation to a portal your dealers actually use.
Working out how your price agreements run
Tiers, discount groups, customer-specific prices and exceptions. This is nearly always the hardest part, and it sets the rest of the build.
Roles per company instead of per person
A dealer is a company with several users, each with their own permissions. That is a different structure from a consumer portal, and you make that choice up front.
Connecting to your ERP or stock system
Your existing system stays the source. The portal shows that data; it does not become a second place where someone re-enters the same price.
Rolling out with a few dealers
First a pilot with a handful of partners you know well, then the rest. Including a short handover so your team manages it themselves.
- ✓Own prices and tiers per business customer
- ✓Several users per company, each with their own permissions
- ✓Order history and status from your own system
- ✓Documents and price lists restricted per partner
- ✓Repository and hosting in your name
The price structure and the number of integrations set the amount, not the number of screens.
The price depends mostly on how your price agreements work and what has to be connected. After a half-hour conversation I know enough for a fixed amount.
Portal, webshop or client portal?
Three things that look alike and solve something different in practice. The question that settles it is simple: does your partner mainly need to look, or also to order?
If your business customer needs insight into prices, orders and documents, this is the page. If they also need to check out with tiers and payment methods, that belongs with B2B webshop development. If it is about your end customers rather than your trade partners, you want client portal development. In practice many companies start with a portal and add ordering later.
B2B portal: viewing
Dealers, resellers and suppliers see their own prices, order history, status and documents. Several users per company, permissions per role. No checkout.
B2B webshop: ordering
The same, plus a basket: customer-specific prices, tiers, payment and shipping agreements per business customer.
Client portal: your end customers
Same technology, different audience: one person per account, own file, quotes and invoices.
Why B2B differs from an ordinary portal
The difference is not in the screens but in the structure underneath. With consumers, one account belongs to one person. With B2B, an account belongs to a company, and that company has several employees who each may do something different.
That sounds like a detail and it is not: it touches your permission model, your pricing logic and the way you assign orders. If it turns out to be needed later, it is a rebuild rather than an extension. Which is why I always ask up front.
Company as the account
Several users under one customer number, with an administrator on their side who adds colleagues themselves.
Prices per relationship
Tiers, discount groups and customer-specific agreements, with an exception that always takes precedence.
Permissions per role
The buyer sees prices, the warehouse sees delivery notes, finance sees invoices. Not everyone sees everything.
History that adds up
Orders, deliveries and documents tied to the right branch, even when a group consists of five legal entities.
Connecting to what you already run
A B2B portal without an integration is a second administration, and that becomes the most quickly abandoned system in your company. Your ERP, stock system or accounting stays the source; the portal is the window onto it.
If your package has an API, I connect to it. If not, we look at an export, an intermediate layer or a periodic synchronisation. That is the first thing I work out, because it sets the rest of the planning. What such an integration looks like is on system integrations.
What is always included
Regardless of size this is always in there, because a B2B portal without these things is not a portal but a liability.
- ✓Login with roles per user
- ✓Permissions at database level, not only in the screen
- ✓Several users per business customer
- ✓Customer-specific prices and tiers
- ✓Documents and price lists per relationship
- ✓Admin side for your own team
- ✓Integration with your current systems
- ✓Hosting inside the EU, code owned by you
What does it cost to get a B2B portal built?
What is the difference with a B2B webshop?
Can several people from the same company log in?
Can it connect to our ERP?
How safe is it when external parties log in?
How long does it take?
Tell me what you
want to build.
A half-hour call. You get an honest answer about what it costs, how long it takes and whether building it is smart at all.