B2B and Magento: Is that possible?

Last October, I had the pleasure of giving a talk on Magento and B2B at Meet Magento Switzerland 2014. The recording of the talk has now been published this week. Reason enough to take up the topic, expand on a few points from the talk and make the presentation and video available. Here we go.

(Reading time: 3 minutes / Video duration: ~ 30 minutes)

B2B eCommerce: The hidden champion

B2B has always held a special position in eCommerce. This is because it was long regarded as the “hidden champion” among the eCommerce sectors. The reason for this is simple: the new ordering option considerably simplified the day-to-day purchasing work for customers of B2B companies (e.g. manufacturers, distributors, etc.). When I started my first company, a computer trading company, 18 years ago, barely out of school, we still ordered by fax and telephone at the very beginning. The daily “ordering” was characterized by constantly changing availabilities, juggling with credit lines and a lot of manual work despite the support of a fairly advanced ERP system. TechData, then still Computer2000, was one of the first distributors to have an eCommerce platform and suddenly a few work steps were eliminated, as availability could be viewed and orders could be placed easily.

For Computer2000, this must have been a kind of tidal shift. Back then, hordes of telemarketers were needed to cope with the rush of orders (customers usually ordered when it was getting close to closing time), but eCommerce generally meant huge cost savings while at the same time reducing sources of error in the process.

B2B eCommerce – the success story

B2B eCommerce was therefore a success story for many companies right from the start. And it still is today. It is much easier to convince management and supervisory boards of B2B eCommerce initiatives than in the B2C sector. In most cases, this can be easily argued with figures. So far so good. But of course there is also movement in B2B eCommerce.

While simple order-capturing systems used to be sufficient, customers increasingly expect eCommerce functionality of the kind we are used to in the B2C sector. In addition, the competitor who can provide the best and simplest system for their customers usually wins. So there is definitely pressure to innovate.

Magento and B2B

So what could be more obvious than using Magento for B2B? In the talk, I ask the question of whether Magento is B2B ready and answer it myself straight away: No, not at all. But the bottom line is that Magento is the best choice for many companies because Magento OpenSource solutions offer the following advantages:

1. Lower overall costs, as the usually immense license costs of proprietary systems are eliminated.
2. High configurability, much of what has to be developed in other systems can be configured in Magento.
3. High adaptability thanks to the simple addition of additional modules.
4. No vendor lock-in as open source.

In the talk and in the presentation, I will discuss typical B2B requirements and show how these can be covered in Magento:

Slides on SlideShare:

Video of the talk: