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Closed Beta Opportunity: Independent Companies Behavior in B2B Edition
Closed Beta Opportunity: Independent Companies Behavior in B2B Edition
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We’re excited to announce the closed beta for independent Companies behavior in the B2B Edition Buyer Portal experience, starting on September 3, 2024. This new functionality decouples B2B Edition Company accounts from BigCommerce customer groups, providing you more control over how your B2B buyers interact with your storefront.
What is independent Companies behavior?
B2B Edition Companies establish a business account for each of your B2B clients, and define how their users can interact with the storefront and manage their Buyer Portal. Each Company user has a corresponding customer account in your BigCommerce control panel, which is assigned to a customer group. Customer groups allow you to specify unique pricing for the Company, restrict access to certain product categories, and configure tax zones with Company-specific rates.
Currently, creating or approving a new Company account in your B2B Edition control panel will automatically generate a new customer group that is applied to all Company users. Once created, the Company’s customer group cannot be changed.
Independent Companies behavior eliminates the one-to-one relationship between Company accounts and customer groups, providing the following improvements to Company and buyer management:
No need for thousands of mandatory customer groups — Create as many or as few customer groups as desired to provide your buyers with their preferred storefront experience.
Single source of truth for Company information — Company accounts are the only data record that defines a Company user’s customer group, ensuring that changes to a user’s BigCommerce customer account do not affect their Company access.
Administrative management efficiency — You can create a single customer group that can be used with multiple company accounts, instead of separately configuring pricing and visibility for each Company.
Compatibility with third-party integrations — Customer group-targeted settings configured in third-party applications, such as shipping methods, tax rates, and discounts, can be used with Company accounts.
Changes to the B2B Edition control panel
As part of the independent Companies behavior closed beta, we’ve added new settings to assign customer groups to Company accounts. These settings are present in the Company creation window, as well as the Basic information tab of existing Companies.
Assigning customer groups to new Companies
Updating an existing customer group assignment
Additionally, we’ve added the Default customer group setting in the Settings › General area of your B2B Edition control panel to designate a customer group for all new Companies.
Independent Companies behavior also allows you to provide your storefront’s default catalog visibility and pricing information to buyers by selecting No customer group for their Company.
The settings for independent Companies behavior replace the B2B Edition control panel settings used to assign storefront-specific Price Lists at the Company account level, as the Company’s customer group defines which Price List is active for buyers.
How do I sign up?
The closed beta for independent Company account behavior is only available for stores using the B2B Edition Buyer Portal experience. Before signing up, review the following considerations:
Participating in the beta does not make updates to the customer group assignments of your existing Company accounts. Your buyers will experience no changes to their Buyer Portal and storefront experience unless you update their Company’s customer group.
Once independent Companies behavior is enabled in your store, you cannot go back to the previous behavior for Companies, but you can still create dedicated customer groups for each Company if needed.
If you currently have the self-service tool for Buyer Portal migration in your B2B Edition control panel, you will be unable to migrate back to the legacy storefront experience after participating in the closed beta.
Third-party integrations, such as ERPs and CRMs, may require modifications to support the data model for independent Companies, depending on the store data they consume. Contact your integration provider to determine if any updates are needed.
To request participation, fill out the beta application form. The BigCommerce Product team will review your submission to determine if your store is a good fit.
After your form submission has been reviewed and approved, you will receive an email from our Product team letting you know that the functionality has been enabled on your store. They will also provide instructions on how to use independent Companies behavior and a form for you to submit any feedback you have during the closed beta.
The final word
Providing curated products, pricing, and functionality on your storefront is essential for maintaining your relationships with your B2B clients. Independent Companies behavior in the B2B Edition Buyer Portal experience makes it easy for you to configure and manage Company accounts in a way that suits you and your buyers.
