B2B Enterprise  Integrations

Always something extra

Running e-commerce always involve integrations to external systems. With B2B e-commerce there is usually something "extra" to it.

In this article, we will present a number of the more typical integrations for B2B e-commerce. You'll both read about options on how to handle them and recommendations on how to do the implementation.

Additionally, you'll also be shown different implementation strategies.

Complexity in Customizations

Most commerce systems are highly customizable. This is great, but also a double-edged sword. While this allows businesses to tailor the platform to their specific needs, the complexity of doing so can be a significant challenge. It requires skilled developers who understand both the core software and the unique needsof the business. For that exact reason, it is our recommendation that you take a strategic approach to your customizations - before you start! - please!

Implementation Strategy and Customizations

Before doing any customizations to your commerce systems, it is important to define an implementation strategy. Our experience tells us, that a number of factors typically plays a role:

• Technical maturity and skills
  Do you have the skills in-house, or do you need a technical partner?
  You might re-consider the need for complex customizations and might be able to reach your expected feature in some other way. Potentially changing the way you work, and utilize what the system provides - and avoid doing a customization.
  From a strategy perspective: Choose a path of adapting to the system's features, or choose customizations where you will need technical resources.
  
  
• Budget
  Boring topic, yes. Doing customization has a cost to it. Get clarity around the budget for implementing customizations.
  
  
• Risk Assessment
  Customizations also adds uncertainty. All systems comes with “connectors” and “accelerators” - that might help. There is always uncertainty by doing customizations. Ask yourself: Is this really needed? How much risk does it add?
  
  
• Roadmap and platforms
  Always build a roadmap over your features and the customizations needed. If you have a lot of customizations, ask yourself this: Is my business really that special? It might be, and if customizations is needed to run your business that gives you a special edge - it’s most likely the right call to make. Alternatively, you can consider if you really have the right commerce platform? Or a platform where customizations are more simple to implement.
  
  

We always discuss the above with our clients before implementing integrations. We also believe it's important to keep things as simple as possible.

On one end of the spectrum where the clean and pure architecture is you always implement integrations through a integration framework or broker. This makes it clean, and independent, easy to swap out systems and endpoints. That is all good, and that’s also the right choice for some.

For others it is really not needed. What are the chances for “Swapping” out your ERP? A new payment provider? And if that happens, how much code change is needed?

Things to consider, and better consider it before you start an implementation project.

Performance Optimization

As B2B e-commerce sites often have complex catalogs and customer-specific pricing, this can lead to performance issues.

As B2B e-commerce sites often have complex catalogs and customer-specific pricing, this can lead to performance issues. Especially with extensive customizations or large amounts of data, systems can become slow without proper optimization, such as caching, indexing and the right updating strategies.

Having a decent motoring setup is a must-have. Performance bottlenecks needs to be identified before they can get fixed. It’s important to have monitoring on all levels in place from the get-go, and start identifying potential challenges from the start, and before go-live.

A lot of good tools can help you out. At Alpha Solutions, we utilize a number of various tools - often a combination between public known tools, as well as lightweight home-grown tools. Whatever gives the most value for a given use-case.

Scalability

As your business grows, the platform must scale accordingly.

If you're on self-hosting, or using older software like Magento, then you know the challenges. You can scale well, but this often involves upgrading to more expensive plans, adding more servers, or enhancing the existing infrastructure, which can be costly and technically challenging.

If you're on a modern architecture and new technology like Medusa, or an enterprise scale SaaS like Sitecore OrderCloud you have no issues scaling. For the latter, Sitecore OrderCloud will handle that for you automatically. For Medusa, if you choose Medusa Cloud as hosting it will also handle scaling - or you can handle that part on your own. 

Scalability is always a need, but also depends on the use case, and the cost. No matter what, it’s really important to have your systems set up to limit excessive usage, and usage alerts as well. Pretty sure we all have stories about Azure costs going through the roof, because "someone" changed a small thing and "should mean a lot to usage".

The solution is, again, to have the proper monitoring, alerts and limitations setup - and follow it closely. It is recommended to have these considerations during the planning and architecture phase. Systems have very different pricing models, and doing the right projects and calculations up-front can save you a lot of money.

Costs & Flexibility

B2B Software can be quite expensive. Even with the open-source software, that offers a free community version, they can exclude the B2B features you might need - so you have to get on the commercial version. Magento and Adobe do it like that.

• Medusa is an open-source alternative that has a strong feature-set, high flexibility and where a professional hosting a support can be purchased if needed.

   

• Sitecore OrderCloud is a very strong professional commerce alternative, that handles both B2C, B2B as well as marketplaces. These two commerce systems are for most use case our preferred recommendations.

   

Flexibility comes in many flavors when it comes to commerce and integrations. There’s no doubt that adding integration brokers or special integration layers will give the best possible flexibility. But it also adds cost. It all depends on the use case, and complexity and the likelihood for future changes etc.

We recommend to keep it as simple as possible for a start. The less customizations, and less code - the better. Less maintenance, less dependencies and less cost for the client.

A final note on B2B Commerce Software

Choosing the right software for your B2B business is not a simple task, but we can make it a lot simpler. At Alpha Solutions we put you through a process to document clarifications needed to do both project estimates, timelines and prospecting commerce software candidates.

We do know time is a scarce resource for most people. Our process takes that into consideration.

Some clients have the time, and need a well documented output as well as detailed options to forward on to their leadership.

Other clients need to spend less time, and potentially get a good overview over prospects, timeline and cost - within a matter of a few days. 

We like challenges! Please reach out to us- we will create some clarity and facts for you to make a qualified decisions for your business.