Magento Named A Magic Quadrant Leader

In the latest Magic Quadrant report, Gartner has named Adobe/Magento a leader in digital commerce for 2019. This is no surprise to us at Corevist. As a Magento Technology Partner, we support Magento-SAP integration within the Corevist Commerce suite, and many of our clients leverage Magento for a phenomenal B2B user experience which interacts with SAP in real time.

In its analysis of Magento, Gartner found a few points where the platform could be extended to better support B2B complexity. Here’s what Gartner said:  

“Although approximately 40% of Magento clients today use the vendor to serve B2B commerce, the platform currently lacks major B2B functions such as out-of-the-box workflow approvals, contract-specific terms and role-based spending limits.”

This shouldn’t discourage manufacturers considering Magento. In fact, Corevist Commerce makes Magento even more powerful for B2B in these 3 areas (and more). Here’s how:  

1. Out-of-the-box workflow approvals

A B2B purchase may pass through several hands before it gets approved. As we’ve detailed in our case study on User Privileges, manufacturers often need support for complex order workflows and several user hierarchies—for example:

• A user who can build orders and submit them for approval, but can’t place orders and can’t see pricing.
• A user who can approve/place orders but still can’t see pricing.
• A user who can approve/place orders and see full pricing.

That’s not the only dimension to the workflow/approval problem in B2B ecommerce. Relationships between manufacturers, dealers, and distributors are often complex. That’s why manufacturers need support for additional complexity surrounding workflow/approval—things like:

• Support for multiple “on-behalf-of” accounts for each ecommerce user. In SAP terms, we call this “multiple ship-to/multiple sold-to.” This is essential for sales reps who use the Corevist/Magento web channel to buy on behalf of multiple customers. It’s also crucial for customers like dealers or distributors who buy on behalf of multiple end users. This is so central to ecommerce for manufacturers, we’ve included it in Corevist Commerce out of the box. This ensures that your Magento web channel honors all your ship-to/sold-to relationships as specified in SAP. Read more here: Ordering On Behalf of Multiple Customers in Corevist Commerce.
• 3PL (3rd party logistics provider) access to Corevist Commerce. For manufacturers who use a 3PL for fulfillment, ecommerce + SAP presents a conundrum. How do you give everyone the access they need to place and modify orders–including varying user permissions? Here’s how Corevist supports the complexity of ecommerce access for 3PLs.

2. Contract-specific terms

Here’s one of the many reasons we built Corevist with SAP integration at the core: Contract terms live in the ERP system, yet manufacturers need them reflected in ecommerce.

How do you get contract pricing into the ecommerce platform with total accuracy and scalability?

Some form of integration is required. At a high level, there are 2 ways to bring contract pricing from the ERP into ecommerce:

• Direct real-time integration (this is what Corevist Commerce is built on)
• Middleware solution (a 3rd system sits between ecommerce and ERP)

While middleware is a common solution to the problem, it does present some drawbacks. These drawbacks don’t affect contract pricing as much (since that doesn’t change often), but they do affect other SAP data that’s frequently updated. Consider this: You have to rebuild your ERP business rules in 2 places (ecommerce and middleware), and you have to maintain those business rules in 3 places (ERP, ecommerce, and middleware). That’s a lot of duplicate effort whenever a change is required.

In contrast, Corevist Commerce is built with direct, real-time integration to SAP. Corevist + Magento acts as a window over the SAP system, presenting SAP business rules on the web in real time. Whenever you update business rules in SAP, the changes are carried to the web store immediately, no extra effort required. Since each Corevist Commerce user is associated with a sold-to in SAP, the ecommerce user sees contract pricing in Magento that reflects their contract in SAP.

Further reading:

• Nail Your Pricing in B2B Ecommerce
• Direct E-commerce Integration Vs. Middleware

3. Role-based spending limits

If B2B ecommerce is going to work for manufacturers, it has to support complex purchasing workflows. Like #1 above, this point is necessary for manufacturers who need to limit the abilities of different users. And since Corevist supports varying user privileges in general, we also support the assignment of different spending limits to different users.

For more on how we handle credit limits, check out this post: Enforce B2B Credit Limits The Friendly Way.  

Moving forward: FREE case study

Want to see how Corevist extends Magento for manufacturers? Download this case study on PARI Respiratory. You’ll learn how PARI engaged Corevist + Magento to meet the complex B2B needs of all stakeholders involved.

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