How to Overcome the Challenges in B2B eCommerce Integration

With irreversible changes brought into our world by the pandemic, every sector of the industry has undergone an evolution to grow and thrive in the post-COVID-19 world. The B2B market has also seen similar significant changes. Gone are the days of in-person sales, and in their place, we now have the rise of the B2B eCommerce platforms. B2B eCommerce platforms provide the accessibility and comfort of seamlessly making purchases online from digital stores. However, with the increasing volume of online B2B purchases, businesses require more flexibility and scalability from the platform. With the need for expanded functionalities from B2B eCommerce websites, the need for its integration with other core technology systems of an organization is higher than ever. However, the specialized resources and technical prowess needed for it means most companies fail to implement it successfully. The benefits of B2B eCommerce integration can provide several advantages to a company, but the challenges of developing an integration from scratch are a huge roadblock.

What is B2B eCommerce

Before we delve into the challenges of B2B eCommerce integration and how to overcome them, we need to first understand what B2B eCommerce is. In simple terms, B2B eCommerce is the process of marketing and selling products through online transactions between businesses. Traditionally B2B sales took place through face-to-face sales, but through an eCommerce platform, order processing is digital, which is more convenient for customers and improves buying efficiency and effectiveness for wholesalers, manufacturers, and distributors. With both B2B buyers and sellers preferring the new digital way of doing business, B2B eCommerce is here to stay and will continue to be one of the most booming sectors in the years to come.

The Challenges to B2B eCommerce Integration

The benefits of operational flexibility, reduced time to market, and sustainable business scalability make full-stack integration of an organization’s software ecosystem a very in-demand functionality across the industry. With Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications storing business-critical data such as product details, item prices, account information, order data, and many more, B2B eCommerce integration with those systems is not a choice, but a necessity. However, most small and medium enterprises do not have the disposable resources for the in-house development of those integrations. Due to this, they face the following challenges to B2B eCommerce integration.

Consolidating Multiple Data Formats

ECommerce platforms and other business applications use different data formats to log information in their databases. In most cases, these data formats are incompatible with each other. Creating an integration of the B2B eCommerce application with the other software systems requires the different data structures to be converted into a data format compatible with all the integrated applications. Developing such a system is time-consuming and requires expertise for successful implementation.

Complex to Code

Developing integrations from the ground up is no easy task. The coding required for integration development is a highly specialized skill that not every team member will have. It requires a dedicated team of experts and a significant amount of time to create an integration such as that of a B2B eCommerce application with other line-of-business applications. The time, resources, and a team of skilled developers are not something every business can have readily available. The limitations due to the complexity of coding are one of the biggest hurdles to integration.

Maintenance of Integrations

The full-stack integration of an enterprise’s entire software infrastructure is not a deploy-and-forget solution. Manually creating an integration also requires manually managing and maintaining them as well. Every software application needs to be updated from time to time. During the process of upgrading, the version of the dependency library of these applications also changes. Mismatches between these library versions can cause errors in the integration. Thus, a full-time dedicated team is needed to maintain and manage all necessary protocols and libraries of the integrated application to ensure system stability. Establishing such a dedicated team can stretch out the limited resources of smaller businesses.

Developing Customized Sync Rules

B2B customers have higher expectations when it comes to their purchasing experience. They require more features and flexibility when making a purchase. With every customer bringing in unique requirements, custom data for order quotes, product volume, and invoices must be managed by the B2B eCommerce platform. Thus, during the development of the integrations, resources need to be allocated to define custom rules to synchronize the information across the applications.

Inconsistent Databases

With pre-existing data silos, there is a high chance of information inconsistency across the different databases. Integration of these databases will lead to conflicting details between the systems, defeating the entire purpose of creating an end-to-end integrated application ecosystem. Thus, organizations need to devote time to cleaning up their databases before migrating to an integrated architecture.