WebSphere® Commerce Business Edition supports the all of the enterprise capabilities of WebSphere Commerce Professional Edition, plus the following Business-to-Business (B2B) benefits:

New in V5.6
Business accounts and contracts

• Include payment and shipping information (provider, charge type, and address) to a new or existing account
• Simpler product entitlement, pricing for contracts, emergency fixes can be made to product entitlement
• Contract referencing between stores and contracts

Catalog filtering

• Restricting the master catalog view to a specific set of users to include or exclude all or a subset of categories and catalog entries

Extended sites

• Support for multiple sites aimed at different audiences

Request for Quote (RFQ)

• Deeper RFQ and shopping cart integration; control RFQ's at the category level

Store creation wizard

• Creation of hosted B2B stores, including catalog filtering

Core Capabilities

• Channel Management - provides channel management capabilities to support integrated value chains for transactions involving multiple parties. This enables enterprises to optimize the flow of products, goods, services, and information through the value chain, while streamlining the management and administrative aspects of orchestrating these relationships. Key capabilities to support both demand and supply chains include:
  • Business relationship management between channel partners and suppliers
  • Product information management for channel partners and suppliers
  • Distributed order management
  • Channel inventory monitoring,
  • Order hand-off and order status tracking)
  • Co-marketing with channel partners and suppliers
  • Multi-party RFQ and RFP
  • Private marketplace and partner hosting
  • Secured sign-on and access control for channel partners and suppliers
  • Self-provisioning for channel partners and suppliers
  • Collaboration with channel partners and suppliers
• Hosting Support - provides support for hosting channels partners to deliver a seamless brand experience and providing localized service to end customers. Additionally, the solution may be deployed by Internet Service Providers or other hosting providers to host merchants or other businesses .
• B2B Store Enhancements - includes new store models to support value chain and hosted commerce interactions:
  • Direct Sales Store - Previously available inV5.4; supports store scenarios.
  • Hosted Store - New with this release, stores owned by Hosted Resellers under Reseller Hub, Hosted Merchants or Resellers under Hosting Hub and Hosted Suppliers under Supplier Hub
  • Commerce Hub - New with this release, including a Reseller Hub, Hosting Hub or Supplier Hub:
    • Reseller Hub - A reseller hub in a Demand chain, is usually owned by a manufacturer or distributor and is designed to help move products from suppliers to resellers, and eventually to consumers. The site owner creates and manages the master catalog in the reseller hub. Resellers log into the reseller hub, browse product catalog and add products to shopping cart. Resellers can check product availability, supplier location, and prices from multiple remote suppliers. Resellers can split their shopping cart among different remote suppliers based on product availability, prices and other factors.
    • Supplier Hub - A Supplier hub in a Supply chain, is usually owned by a large enterprise buyer such a manufacturer, where suppliers are invited to participate to supply complementary products to the buyer. In a Supplier hub, the buyer can request quotes, compare prices, and negotiate contracts with suppliers. Suppliers can also be hosted on the site to sell directly to the buyer for some of their catalog items without going through the marketplace.
    • Hosting Hub - A Hosting hub in Hosting support, is usually owned by an Internet Services Provider or a large manufacturer, where a set of self-provisioning tools are provided to the merchants or resellers to create and manage their own stores. Merchant or reseller stores can share the master catalog created by the site owner in the hosting hub, or they can build their own independent catalog. Hosted stores can track inventory and fulfill orders from customers. A hosted store usually shares a common page template design and shopping flow with other hosted stores with choices of different style sheets and logo for the hosted stores.
• RFQ- Available only in Business Edition, provides the capability for an RFQ to solicit quotes for a specific set of goods and services between buyer and supplier. Enhancements include:
  • Support more RFQ closing rule such as RFQ will be closed if a specific number of responses are received
  • Provide targeted RFQ support, attachments to RFQ, made-to-orders items in RFQ and multi-round RFQ support
  • Allow creation of RFQ without setting up the interest list, add items from the requisition list, grouping of the products in RFQ, substitution of products in response, and specify a fulfillment center in the response
• Online Buyer/Seller Collaboration - Available only in Business Edition, it provides a contract draft and proposal discussion template, based on Lotus QuickPlace. This template is integrated into the business-to-business store model included with the software. A seller company's sales or account manager can create a draft contract, share this contract with buyers in the buying organization, and also discuss the contract using threaded discussion on Lotus Domino™. Additional features also allow online buyers and sellers to make decisions about the quantity and content of orders, delivery dates, promotions, and designs of new products.