The B2B ecommerce glossary.

Selling to other businesses online, rather than to consumers. It differs from B2C in who buys (often several people in one company), how they pay (on account, against credit limits) and what they see (their own prices, catalogues and terms). B2B ecommerce.

A logged-in website for trade customers to order, check prices and stock, see invoices and manage their account themselves, instead of phoning or emailing. B2B and trade portals.

A way for a customer to shop your catalogue from inside their own purchasing system (such as SAP Ariba, Coupa or Proactis). They "punch out" to your store, fill a basket, and the basket returns to their system to be approved and turned into a purchase order. More on punchout · Punchout portals.

Your products and the customer's prices, made available to their purchasing system through punchout, so their buyers can only order what's been agreed.

Prices that differ by customer or customer group, from contract prices and discounts to price breaks for quantity. In B2B ecommerce each customer sees their own prices once they log in.

Letting a customer request a quote online, negotiate it with your sales team, then turn the agreed quote into an order with one click.

Ordering by typing or pasting product codes and quantities, or repeating a past order, rather than browsing. Most trade buyers know exactly what they want.

Buying on account: the customer orders now and pays on invoice later, within a credit limit and payment terms you set, such as 30 days.

Rules that send an order for sign-off before it's placed, for example any order over a set amount, so a buyer's manager or finance team approves it first.

A saved list of products a customer orders regularly, which they can add to the basket in one go.

Connecting systems so information moves between them automatically, such as orders from the store into the ERP, and prices and stock back. Integration.

Application programming interface: a defined way for one system to ask another for information or to make it do something. Most modern integrations use APIs.

Electronic data interchange: exchanging business documents such as orders, invoices and delivery notes between companies' systems in standard formats (such as EDIFACT or ANSI X12), long used by large retailers and their suppliers.

Commerce XML: a format for exchanging purchasing documents, used for punchout with systems such as SAP Ariba and Coupa.

Open Catalog Interface: SAP's standard for punchout, used by buyers on SAP purchasing systems. It does a similar job to cXML punchout in a different format.

A message one system sends to another the moment something happens, such as an order being placed, so the other system doesn't have to keep checking.

Software that sits between systems and handles the integrations, such as mapping data and retrying failures. An iPaaS (integration platform as a service) does this in the cloud; Jitterbit is one.

Systems exchanging information as things happen, rather than in batches every few hours, so prices, stock and order status are always up to date.