A B2B ordering platform that stays true to your ERP
Your trade customers want to order the way they buy everything else — online, at their own prices, on their own terms, at ten at night if that suits them. The hard part was never the storefront. It is that every rule a trade order depends on already lives in your ERP, and a platform that drifts from it creates more work than the phone calls it replaced.
What a B2B ordering platform actually is
Software that lets business customers place orders themselves, against the terms you have actually agreed with them. Not a public shop with a trade discount bolted on — a logged-in portal where each buyer sees their prices, their credit position, their order history and the ranges they are allowed to buy. The measure of a good one is blunt: buyers stop phoning and emailing orders in, because the portal is genuinely easier — and your office stops rekeying them, because the order is already in the ERP.
For your customers
Order at any hour, see live availability, reorder from history in a couple of clicks, and trust that the price on screen is the price on the invoice — because both come from the same place.
For your reps
Order on behalf of any account at a show or a visit, with that customer's own pricing in front of them. One order book, not a stack of forms to type in on Monday.
For your office
Orders arrive in the ERP with no manual rekeying, which removes the main cause of mispriced lines and mislaid orders — and frees the team for the conversations that actually need a human.
What it has to handle, because wholesale is not retail
Every one of these exists because trade buying works differently from consumer buying. A platform missing any of them pushes that work back onto your team.
Customer-specific pricing
Price lists per customer or customer group, agreed discounts, contract prices. The price a buyer sees at log-in must be the price your ERP would invoice — automatically, not maintained by hand in two places.
Account terms, not card checkout
Trade customers order on account against credit terms. The platform needs to know the terms, respect credit limits, and leave payment where it belongs — with your invoicing process, not a checkout form.
Back orders that behave
When stock runs short, wholesale does not lose the line — it records it and fulfils when stock lands. The platform must capture back orders the way your ERP expects, or the order book and the warehouse stop agreeing.
Quantity and range rules
Cartons and pallets rather than eaches, minimum order values, and catalogues that differ by customer — because not every buyer is entitled to every range or price break.
Live stock worth trusting
Availability on screen should reflect what the ERP knows, updated as it changes. Stale stock figures are how a portal teaches buyers to phone first "just to check" — which defeats the point of having one.
Order history that matches reality
Reordering is most of wholesale buying. History, invoices and order status pulled from the ERP make the portal the buyer's first stop; a portal that cannot answer "where is my order?" sends them straight back to the phone.
The ERP connection is the actual product
Every rule above already lives in your ERP: prices, terms, stock, credit, catalogue. So the question that decides whether a B2B ordering platform works is not what its screens look like — it is how faithfully, and how durably, it stays in step with the system of record. This is where we are deliberately different: the platform and the ERP are connected through our Integration Data Hub, one maintained layer that keeps the ERP authoritative rather than a fragile set of point-to-point links.
The ERP stays the truth
Products, stock, prices, customers, orders and invoices sync through the hub. The portal displays what the ERP knows; orders land where your operation already works.
Built connectors, not promises
We publish connectors for Brightpearl, SAP Business One and Caliq, plus Shopify, Faire, Blue Alligator and structured file feeds. Anything else is scoped honestly as bespoke work.
One layer to maintain
ERP upgrades and API changes are absorbed in the hub rather than rippling through every connection. That is the difference between an integration that survives year three and one that quietly rots.
If you are weighing this build-out against alternatives, our comparison of the five ways UK wholesalers run B2B ordering covers the options honestly — including where we are the wrong answer. And what the connection itself costs is set out in our working model of ERP integration cost.
Ordering app, trade portal, B2B webshop — what the words mean
Suppliers use these terms loosely, which makes quotes hard to compare. Here is how we would untangle them — and which one most wholesalers actually need.
B2B webshop / trade portal
A logged-in website where trade customers order on their own terms. Works on every device with nothing to install. This is the right first move for most wholesalers — it serves desk buyers and phone buyers alike, and it is where the ERP rules do their work.
B2B ordering app
A native install on a phone or tablet. Earns its keep in narrower cases: reps working offline at shows or on the road, or buyers who reorder so frequently that a home-screen icon genuinely changes behaviour. The honest sequence is portal first, app when usage proves the need.
B2B ecommerce platform
The whole system underneath either front end: catalogue, pricing engine, account rules, ERP connection, and the admin that runs it. This is the layer where the buying decision really sits — the front ends are interchangeable; the platform is not.
The one distinction worth holding onto: whatever the front end, the orders your reps capture away from a desk need to land in the same flow as everything else — how offline and trade-show orders go missing is one of the quietest ways wholesale operations leak money.
B2B ordering platform questions
What is a B2B ordering platform?
Software that lets your trade customers place orders themselves, against the terms you have actually agreed with them: their prices, their credit limit, their delivery arrangements, the ranges they are allowed to buy. The difference from an ordinary online shop is not the storefront — it is that every one of those rules normally lives in your ERP, so the platform is only as good as its connection to it.
Do we need a B2B ordering app, or is a web portal enough?
For most UK wholesalers a well-built web portal is the right answer: it works on any device, needs no installation or app-store updates, and buyers ordering at a desk or on a phone browser get the same account, prices and history. A native app earns its keep in narrower cases — reps working offline at trade shows or in the field, or buyers who reorder so often that a home-screen icon genuinely changes behaviour. The honest sequence is portal first, app if usage proves the need.
What does a B2B webshop need that a normal online shop does not?
Log-in before prices, because trade prices are negotiated and not public. Prices per customer or customer group rather than one retail price. Ordering on account against credit terms rather than paying by card. Quantity rules — cartons, pallets, minimums. Back orders that are recorded and fulfilled rather than lost. And a catalogue that can differ by customer, because not every buyer is allowed every range. None of this is cosmetic; each rule usually already exists in the ERP.
How does the platform connect to our ERP?
Through our Integration Data Hub, which keeps the ERP as the single source of truth. Products, stock, customer records, price lists, orders and invoices sync through one maintained layer with no manual rekeying. We publish connectors for Brightpearl, SAP Business One and Caliq, plus Shopify, Faire, Blue Alligator and structured file feeds; other systems are scoped as bespoke work rather than promised as off-the-shelf.
Can our sales reps use it as well as customers?
Yes — and for many wholesalers rep ordering is the larger share of order volume. A rep can order on behalf of an account, see that customer's prices and history, and capture orders at shows or visits. Orders taken this way land in the same flow as customer-placed ones, so there is one order book rather than a spreadsheet to reconcile on Monday.
What does it cost, and how long does it take?
The honest answer is that both depend on the same drivers: which ERP, how many entities move, how clean the data is, and how unusual your commercial rules are. We publish a working model of what moves the number — not a price list, but the six drivers and the questions that make quotes comparable — and our pricing structure is public. A discovery call turns them into a figure for your systems.
See it against your own price lists
The fastest way to judge a B2B ordering platform is with your own awkward cases: your most complicated price list, your strangest quantity rule, your busiest rep. A discovery call works through exactly those against what you run today.