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Independent Companies Behavior in B2B Edition
Independent Companies Behavior in B2B Edition
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In September, we announced the closed beta for Independent Companies behavior in the B2B Edition Buyer Portal experience.
We’re excited to inform you that starting October 24, 2024, Independent Companies behavior is now the default experience for new B2B Edition stores. It is available to new stores upon request.
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.
Previously, creating or approving a new Company account in your B2B Edition control panel automatically generated a new customer group which was applied to all Company users. However, once assigned, Companies and their associated buyers could not be reassigned to a different 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.
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.
Assigning Customer Groups to Companies
When creating a new Company, you can assign a customer group in the Company creation window. If you prefer to provide your storefront’s default catalog visibility and pricing information to buyers, you can do so by selecting No customer group.
Similarly, you can assign, change, or remove a customer group on the Basic information tab when editing an existing Company.
The Default customer group setting in the Settings › General area of your B2B Edition control panel allows you to designate a customer group to be automatically assigned to all new Companies. This is especially helpful if you’ve enabled automatic approval for Company account applications submitted by prospective buyers.
Enabling Independent Companies in Your Store
Independent Companies behavior is now the default experience for new stores. For existing stores, contact BigCommerce support to have Independent Companies behavior enabled. Note that you must be using the B2B Edition Buyer Portal experience to be eligible for Independent Companies.
Once enabled, current customer group assignments will remain the same, and your buyers will experience no changes to their Buyer Portal and storefront experience unless you update their Company’s customer group.
Keep in mind that 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.
The final word
A curated storefront experience is essential for maintaining your relationships with your B2B clients. Customer group management with Independent Companies behavior makes it easy for you to configure product pricing and catalog visibility for your Companies.
