Multi-User Profiles and B2B Account Management

An eCommerce developer can create a profile space for your customers who need multiple profiles in their account on your B2B eCommerce platform. Many companies have subsidiaries that may have different legal entities, maybe even based in different regions (states, provinces) or countries. There may also be a hierarchy within the business based on acquisitions or mergers. It’s very important that the account profile is flexible enough to handle any situation that a customer brings to the table.  

In order to do that, a B2B eCommerce platform needs to have the latest custom user interface and make it as simple as possible for the end-user, a platform so intuitive that no user is overwhelmed. Failing to make the process simple on a user could make them head to a competitor who has an easier way to provide the multi-user experience. 

Basic Company Information

First, we want to provide the company with the latest custom user interface into which they can put their standard information. This is typically going to be simple details like legal entity name, primary headquarters address, contact information, and then the ability to see and drill down into additional subsidiaries and/or locations. Common subcategories of users include warehouses, distribution centers, storefronts, corporate offices, or mixed-use locations. Special tags or decorators can identify and delineate each user so that your business can accommodate their business workflow. 

It may include additional fields like tax information, tax ID information, and account credit forms. It can even include data coming from a third-party information system, such as a Dun and Bradstreet credit rating that the Clarity platform is pulling in from their API. In such a case, you may choose to not have the API module to show the raw data and maybe just show if they are approved for a certain credit limit and allow them to request additional credit. 

Multiple users often lead to the need for multiple shipping addresses. A company could have a dozen locations, and each of those could have a user who is authorized to make purchases from you. 

If your B2B eCommerce business has multiple locations to ship from, you can take advantage of the reduced shipping times that it takes to get your product to the customer. An intelligent platform will simply ship from the warehouse that is closest to the customer’s destination, no matter which one it is. Your platform should also be able to combine inventory from multiple warehouses if the customer wants more than the first warehouse has on hand. B2B eCommerce solutions can instantly perform manual tasks that might otherwise take hours. 

Expandability and Icons

A key part of this is the design of the website itself and offering the latest custom user interface experience via the concept of expandability. This includes intelligent, intuitive icons and rollovers for someone who's interacting with the system, as well as either video or other documentation that offers help regarding the use of these. 

These are scenarios that we're dealing with the enterprise eCommerce portals, C2C marketplaces, etc., and the ability to separate these locations within a corporate structure and then decorate them with this specificity around what their functions are and what they can do. Each of these differences can dictate how the B2B platform interacts with the buyer (or buyers) around these different locations. 

User-Specific Data

Account profiles are very customizable, so it is possible for Clarity to very easily (and at low cost) make the account profile dynamic so that it can adapt to the account type of the user and the role of the user that's logged in. For instance, we can show and hide fields in the account profile based on whether or not it's a financial role within the company or if it's a fulfillment role, a business management or a super-admin role. For instance, your new B2B eCommerce platform could make it so that a user is able to see the fields but isn’t allowed to edit anything. 

These are all different permutations of the capabilities that are all easy for Clarity, because we’ve created the base code for our B2B eCommerce platform. We’re able to extend the entire platform in a very powerful way because we're not directly overriding the base code. Instead, we're extending it and expanding it through plugin architecture and an extension model. 

Clarity can customize an eCommerce platform for your specific scenario — offering the lowest cost possible — because of our custom architecture. Ensure every account profile is highly customizable in order to make all of your customers happy.