If your business depends on SAP ERP, then your B2B ecommerce solution must share data with SAP, whether that’s ECC or S/4HANA. Otherwise, you’ll end up with duplicate records for customers, products, orders, and more—and you’ll have to implement manual processes to synchronize the two systems.

Hence the need to integrate B2B ecommerce and SAP.

But not all integrations are created equal. Conventional architecture involves a connector or middleware solution sitting between SAP and B2B ecommerce, yet this can create a permanent burden of upgrades and configuration changes to keep everything working smoothly.

The alternative is a solution like Corevist Commerce—which includes direct, prebuilt, real-time integration to SAP ERP. In fact, Corevist includes 49 integration points to SAP to cover the entire customer journey.

Here are 7 that are truly essential, regardless of your industry or business model.

1. Order status and tracking

Tracking ecommerce orders is a normal feature in B2B ecommerce solutions. But what about orders from all channels—phone, fax, email, and EDI?

Every order your customer has placed lives in your SAP ERP system. So it’s a great bonus to give them access to all orders within B2B ecommerce.

But customers don’t only need order status. They also need line item status, shipment status, and real-time integration to carrier tracking numbers.

To offer all this, you’ll need a robust, real-time integration to SAP ERP that pulls all orders (and relevant data) associated with the customer’s account. Corevist includes all this functionality out of the box.

2. Real-time credit status

Whether they order by phone, email, EDI, or B2B ecommerce, customers need visibility into their credit status. After all, if a crucial order is going to go on credit block, customers need to know so they can deal with the situation and ensure they get their products on time.

This is why credit status is an essential B2B ecommerce feature. It needs to come from your SAP ERP system in real time, which requires a robust integration.

Naturally, Corevist includes this feature out of the box. Every customer sees their credit status in real time, straight from your SAP ERP system.

3. Self-service invoice payments

Not every organization is ready to accept B2B ecommerce orders paid by credit card. Some may prefer to take orders with a payment method of “invoice.”

Outside of B2B ecommerce, customers may continue to place orders by alternate methods that generate invoices.

Whatever the scenario, SAP companies become more customer-friendly when they offer self-service digital payments within their B2B ecommerce experiences. (They also cut costs and reduce days sales outstanding.)

Offering this functionality requires integration to SAP and a payment provider. Corevist supports this with an add-on.

4. Personalized pricing

If customers are going to place orders via B2B ecommerce, then they’ll need to get their personalized pricing in B2B ecommerce. If customers see generic pricing, that will cause confusion and frustration. If the order posts to SAP with the wrong pricing, that will incur extra costs for the merchant, as the order needs adjustment and customer needs manual follow-up to explain the situation.

It’s better to ensure that every customer sees 100% accurate pricing in B2B ecommerce. A robust SAP integration can provide this for every logged-in user, and Corevist includes this functionality out of the box.

5. Real-time inventory

If customers are going to place an order, they need to know whether the product is available. Some merchants may have business reasons for not providing this information, but in our experience, most organizations want to provide it—because customers need to see it.

If SAP ERP is the system of record for inventory availability, then you’ll need an SAP integration that shows real-time inventory. (Bonus points if this integration supports personalized ATP quantities for different logged-in customers, as Corevist does.)

6. Instant, error-free order posting to SAP

An SAP “integration” isn’t much good if it allows orders to post to SAP with errors. Ideally, the solution should only allow orders that conform perfectly to your SAP business rules—and it should provide intelligent error messaging to customers to help them solve issues before placing the order.

If you can achieve all this, then every order that posts to SAP from B2B ecommerce will be error-free. This eliminates the need for callbacks, adjustments, and additional work from customer service.

Corevist includes this integration out of the box. Our application simulates an order against the relevant SAP business rules and returns any error messages. Once the customer fixes the order and it passes the simulation check, the customer can place the order—which posts it to SAP instantly.

7. Change order capabilities

Not every organization allows customers to change orders after they’ve been placed. But for those that do, it’s essential to give customers this power within the B2B ecommerce experience.

Naturally, providing this functionality requires a robust integration to SAP. You want to capture those changes in SAP immediately, and you want to ensure that customers don’t make changes that aren’t allowed by your SAP business rules.

To do all this, you’ll need a powerful SAP integration—which Corevist includes out of the box.

The takeaway

If your business lives in SAP ERP, then your B2B ecommerce experience needs to reflect all the data and logic that exists in SAP. That’s why a comprehensive SAP integration is essential to success in B2B ecommerce. It’s also why Corevist includes this integration out of the box. You get a managed, cloud-hosted solution that always reflects the state of your SAP system—plus you get our team of SAP experts upgrading, managing, and supporting your solution.