Status: released
Theme: Procurement portal
GitHub: https://github.com/VirtoCommerce/vc-procurement-portal-theme
Procurement portal is the theme that demonstrates the way how e-commerce might be implemented for B2B interaction between a manufacturer or a wholesaler (the Supplier) and product consumer (the Customer). To make this example more concrete we’ve selected the scenario when a dental clinic interacts with the supplier via the Procurement portal backed by Virto Commerce platform.
In this scenario, the Supplier provides to Customer admin access to the closed e-commerce portal where Customer’ employees may order products and keep track of orders that have been created in the past.
Why it is so valuable to deliver procurement portal to business customers
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Control customer experience. For manufacturer and wholesaler companies a digital transformation is about getting control of customer’s experience and knowing the customer. It is important to control customer’s experience, get direct feedback and finally suggest a unique value to customers.
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Give addition value to customer Providing a tool that simplifies the purchasing process and might be “integrated” to customer’s business processes a provider delivers additional value to the customer on top of the products he sells.
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Cost saving on both sides. Self-service features allows a customer to create orders and keep track of orders created before with minimum costs and efforts from both customer and provider side.
The Portal includes the following functionality:
Ordering creation by adding products via the traditional e-commerce interface
Users may check product descriptions, and add products to the order in a traditional way (like a shop). This approach might be useful when employees responsible for purchasing need to buy some specific product and need to know more about product details.
The system also verifies the ordered amount vs stock on the fly.
Repeat the order
In B2B repeating the order is one of the most popular scenarios. A user can just open one of the previous orders and clone to the new one. It is also possible to modify it somehow if required before checkout.
Bulk ordering for making pre-defined orders with many lines
It is well known that most of the orders in the B2B sector are pre-defined by the business needs of the customer. It means that very often an employee who makes order has a pre-defined list of products with quantities and the only thing he should do is to convert it into order.
Bulk order functionality allows users creating order fast just taping in product names or SKUs and quantities.
Paste order details from CSV file
Many companies do purchase planning in Excel or specific software. In this case, the simplest way would be downloading an order content in .csv format (SKU, quantity) and just pasting it into the portal. The system will validate SKUs and quantities and inform the user if something goes wrong.
In the ideal case, you need only two clicks to create an order.
Order history and order statuses
The procurement portal allows browsing the history of orders and keeps track of orders in progress.
Approval workflow
Approval workflow option allows split responsibility for purchasing between few people. It is possible to assign specific roles for each internal user and define who can create order (add products to the cart), who can make a checkout and who should approve it before the checkout.
User management
Each Customer is able to create its own users and assign roles to these users. This kind of customization gives the required autonomy to Customers and allows them to adapt the Procurement Portal to custom business processes.
Demo environment
URL: https://demo.virtocommerce.com/dental/
Users:
- PPAdmin
- PPEmployee1
- PPEmployee2
- PPEmployee3
PASSWORD: Password1!