Which processes are needed to run a B2B e-commerce?

First and foremost

Introducing an e-commerce channel involves many parts of the company; it is not a separate organizational silo. On the contrary, you want to leverage the functions you already have in place rather than reinventing the wheel. Most likely, you already have a functioning finance department, an ERP system, a customer service team, a sales team, a marketing team, etc. Implementing e-commerce is “just” a new channel, even if it can have a major impact and lead to new strategic decisions.

The “new” things you need are an e-commerce team and an adapted fulfillment function. We will return to what these do later on.

 

Before you start

Before looking at implementing e-commerce, you should map out the customer journey. You need to understand, from the customer’s perspective, how they want to interact with you at different stages of the journey. If you skip this step, there’s a great risk you’ll build your organization around a false assumption of what the customer wants—based on how things work today rather than how they should work.

 

Building the B2B e-commerce organization

In addition to the functions you already have, I usually divide the new functions you need to build into 10 key areas:

1. Building brand awareness
2. PIM (Product Information Management)
3. Lead generation / driving traffic
4. Conversion
5. Retention / reactivation
6. Customer service
7. Fulfillment, delivery, warehousing, returns & complaints
8. Pricing and promotions
9. Digital service functions
10. Continuous development of your e-commerce

And there are two additional areas that are becoming increasingly important: fraud management and market monitoring.

 

1. Building brand awareness

Working with brand awareness is not unique to e-commerce, but I want to highlight it because it’s so important—especially in B2B commerce. Sales cycles are often long, and they usually begin with the customer realizing they have a problem or opportunity (the awareness phase of the journey). Once they recognize the need, they start looking for information (the consideration phase). At this point, awareness of existing suppliers plays a big role—the customer will often start looking for solutions among suppliers they already know.

Most likely, you already have a marketing team working with brand awareness, and they should continue doing so. A dedicated e-commerce team rarely drives broad brand marketing, beyond the fact that digital campaigns (ads, content marketing, etc.) always carry a brand message. These should always be aligned with the guidelines developed by the marketing team.

 

2. PIM (Product Information Management)

PIM is about delivering product information to the right recipients in the right channels, ideally with as much automation as possible. Usually, this is done in a PIM system and partly in your ERP.

The benefits of working with PIM include:

• Increased sales: It becomes easier for potential customers to find your products, as many customer journeys begin with an online product search. Returning customers also benefit from quickly finding related products, such as spare parts.
• Happier customers: Quickly finding detailed product information is one of the most important use cases for higher customer satisfaction in B2B.
• More efficient internal processes: Having all product information in one place reduces duplication and contradictions, and is essential for a unified commerce strategy where customers interact across multiple channels with consistent product data.

The PIM process is often described in three steps: Enrich, Plan, and Publish.

• Enrich: Gather all product data (facts, texts, images, videos, etc.), create relationships between products (e.g., accessories, replacements), manage translations, and define product variants.
• Plan: Decide which products belong in which assortments, categories, languages, and markets.
• Publish: Send the right product information to the right channels, languages, and target groups (e.g., global website vs. regional apps vs. procurement portals).

 

Automation is key—even with a small assortment, manual PIM work quickly becomes overwhelming.