Some catalogues have the additional functionality of supporting Business-to-Business (B2B) transactions.
This normally means they have private areas where you can sell goods at wholesale prices that you would not normally offer to customers off the street. Commonly, business customers will be able to set up user accounts, manage repeat orders and even pay on account.
You may also be able to set different prices for different business customers depending on how much and how often they purchase from you. Tendering and quoting features can occasionally be included too.
As Business-to-Business solutions offer more specialist functionality, they are often more expensive than standard catalogues. This also means there is an increased level of complexity with these solution types and they are slightly harder to maintain.
You may find that the standard catalogue solution you choose has a ‘premium’ business-to-business version that you can upgrade to later, when customer levels and sales justify. If you do think you will need this functionality, you should plan for it now to avoid a costly move to an entirely new or incompatible solution at a later date.
