Active B2B

Bring Your Entire B2B Relationship Online

Active B2B is a comprehensive B2B commerce platform, currently integrated with Epicor Prophet 21 and designed to support integration with other modern ERP systems.

It gives your business customers convenient, 24/7 access to ordering and account services while providing your salespeople and staff with powerful tools for serving those customers.

But Active B2B goes well beyond putting your product catalog online.

It recognizes that B2B commerce is a relationship between organizations—with different people, responsibilities, locations, products, pricing and purchasing processes on both sides.

Active B2B brings that entire relationship online.

B2B Commerce Is Different

A consumer website generally serves one shopper.

A business customer can be much more complicated.

Your customer may have a corporate organization with multiple regions and workgroups. Different people may select products, place orders, manage purchasing or oversee the entire corporate account.

They may have negotiated pricing and products selected specifically for their organization. They may purchase through a formal procurement system. And they may depend upon your salesperson to help them find products and solve problems.

Active B2B was designed for this environment.

Support the Entire Customer Organization

Active B2B can reflect the structure of your customer’s business.

Corporate Managers can have broad visibility across their organization and access reporting that individual workgroups do not see.
Regional Managers can have visibility into the locations or workgroups for which they are responsible.
Workgroup Managers can oversee purchasing activity for their individual workgroups.
Workgroup Workers can find and order the products they need while sharing appropriate purchasing information with others in their group.

People within a workgroup can see designated products, relevant quotes and items that have been ordered. Instead of treating every user as an isolated shopper, Active B2B allows people to work together as members of the same organization.

Active B2B reflects the structure of a customer organization: corporate manager, regional managers, workgroup managers and workgroup workers

The right people see the right information.

Give Customers 24/7 Access to Their Business

Your customers shouldn’t have to call your office every time they need to place an order or find information.

Active B2B gives customers convenient online access to many of the activities that are part of doing business with you.

Customers can:

Find and order products
See products designated for their organization
Access customer-specific pricing
Review quotes
See previous purchases
Reorder products
Check order status
View invoices
Pay invoices online

Customers gain the convenience of self-service while your employees remain available whenever personal assistance is valuable.

Help Your Salespeople Sell

B2B ecommerce doesn’t have to replace the salesperson.

Active B2B makes your salespeople part of the digital customer relationship.

Salespeople can work with their customers inside the platform, help them identify products, prepare quotes and assist with orders.

Your inside salespeople can also use Active B2B to support customers and salespeople through the same commerce environment.

Routine transactions can happen online, freeing your sales organization to spend more time helping customers, solving problems and developing business.

Active B2B isn’t a website competing with your salespeople. It is another tool your salespeople can use to serve their customers.

Put Each Customer’s Products Front and Center

A distributor may sell tens or hundreds of thousands of products, while an individual customer regularly purchases only a fraction of them.

Active B2B makes it easier to concentrate on the products that matter to that customer.

Products can be designated for a customer’s organization so employees can quickly find the items they actually use.

And the customer-specific experience doesn’t have to stop at the screen.

A customer or salesperson can select products for a printed catalog created specifically for that customer.

Active B2B can also produce custom shelf labels corresponding to those products, helping employees identify and reorder the correct items where they are actually stored and used.

Your online catalog becomes part of the customer’s workplace.

Work With Your Customers’ Procurement Systems

Some business customers—particularly larger organizations—use procure-to-pay systems to control purchasing.

A procure-to-pay system manages the purchasing process inside the customer’s organization. It can control which suppliers and products employees use, route purchases for approval, create purchase orders and ultimately connect purchasing with payment.

Active B2B supports these customers through PunchOut integration with TradeCentric.

With PunchOut, an employee begins in the customer’s procurement system and enters your online catalog as an authorized buyer. The customer can shop your products and then return the selected items to the procurement system.

The customer’s own purchasing rules and approval processes can then take over.

PunchOut flow: buyer starts in the procurement system, punches out to Active B2B, shops, and returns the cart for approval and a purchase order

This allows your company to become part of the electronic purchasing process your larger customers already use.

Create a Better Experience on Both Sides of the Sale

Active B2B isn’t only for your customers.

It supports the people within your own organization who make B2B commerce work.

Salespeople can serve their assigned customers.
Inside Salespeople can assist customers and support the sales organization.
Product Staff can maintain the product information and ecommerce content customers need to find and understand what you sell.

At the same time, corporate managers, regional managers, workgroup managers and workers within your customer’s organization can have access appropriate to their individual responsibilities.

Everyone works through the same B2B commerce platform, while roles and permissions determine what each person can see and do.

Integrated With Your ERP

Active B2B is currently integrated with Epicor Prophet 21, allowing the online business to use customer, product, pricing, inventory, order, invoice and other business information maintained within the ERP.

Information is exchanged automatically between the systems according to the requirements of the implementation. Prophet 21 continues to perform the functions it does well as the ERP, while Active B2B transforms that business information into a convenient online experience for customers, salespeople and staff.

Customers, salespeople and product staff use Active B2B webpages, which exchange information with the ERP/POS system automatically

Not Limited to Prophet 21

The Active B2B commerce platform is not inherently tied to a single ERP.

Active B2B can be adapted to integrate with other modern ERP systems that provide APIs for accessing and exchanging the necessary business data.

This means a company can retain the B2B commerce capabilities of Active B2B while connecting the platform to the ERP system that is right for its business.

Today, Active B2B works with Epicor Prophet 21. Its architecture provides a path to integration with other API-enabled ERP systems.

More Than an Online Store

An online store sells products.

Active B2B supports a business relationship.

It connects the people who buy from you with the people who serve them. It accommodates organizational structures instead of treating every buyer as an individual consumer. It helps customers find the products that matter to them. It supports salespeople rather than removing them from the process. And it can connect directly with the procurement systems your larger customers already use.

The result is B2B commerce built around the way your customers—and your business—actually work.