On January 18th 2017, the first stable version of OroCommerce – an eCommerce solution designed at 100 % for B2B – was released. Within 5 months, OroCommerce was able to convince both ecommerce integrators and B2B companies top management.
A new solution designed by an experienced team
OroCommerce is offered by the US company Oro Inc., founded in 2012 by three former Magento collaborators : Yoav Kutner (CEO), Dima Soroka (CTO), Jary Carter (CRO). Their skills and market vision allowed Oro Inc. to develop quickly. Oro Inc. has more than 160 employees today.
OroCommerce is not the first product developed by this experienced team. Two other solutions have been released before this one :
- OroPlatform, a business oriented web development platform ;
- OroCRM, a CRM solution designed to manage client’s activities at each point of contact.
OroPlatform is currently used by other editors which generate interest in their own market, like the PIM solution Akeneo or the ERP Marello.
OroCommerce fully embraces OroCRM capabilities, which makes both of them a fantastic pair to efficiently manage your B2B clients.
The solution grows rapidly and has already received good feedbacks from the community and its first clients. Offices are already settled in Germany, Ukraine and Poland. A business development representative agency should open this year in France, and another in the UK.
Two editions covering a large market
OroCommerce has 2 editions :
- OroCommerce Community Edition (CE) : free and open-source, its standard version offers a unique and rich functional scope ;
- OrOCommerce Enterprise Edition (EE) : pay version and annual commercial license, it reuses the basics of the CE edition, plus advanced functionalities.
This open-source approach enables Oro’s ecosystem to grow quickly : developers test and learn thanks to the open source code, B2B companies play with functionalities, good ideas spread over the web, first meetings take place (like OroVibe in Paris in June). This is what had made the incredible success of Magento from 2007 to 2010… thanks to the same persons !
Main functionalities
The OroCommerce team has spent time studying and understanding the very diverse functional specificities of B2B activities and was able to answer with a technical foundation which seems solid and scalable.
B2B companies have needs that are not covered by B2C solutions :
- Managing companies and subsidiaries accounts, with multiple services and contacts
- Enforcing negotiated contract terms with a pricing that varies depending on the quantity or the service purchased
- Requests for quotation and processing
- Managing clients’ outstandings
- Periodic billing (end of month or quarter)
- Different roles within a same company
- etc.
Most of B2B needs find a satisfactory response with OroCommerce EE. Very specific needs may be answered by specific developments, facilitated by a technical foundation that uses well-known technologies (programming language, architecture, components, services…).
Managing enterprise accounts
OroCommerce is able to manage enterprise accounts with complex hierarchies : subsidiaries, departments, teams, offices… The client company is even able to manage by itself accesses to the platform, via its own administrators that are able to create roles and buyers accounts, head of departments, accountants, etc.
Managing accesses, roles and authorizations
Defining roles is key to B2B to respect working processes and ensure the security of the commercial agreements. OroCommerce offers a very complete roles management which personalizes the access to functionalities and data : catalogue, pricing, direct purchase, request for quotation, individual or collective role…
Multiple organizations, multiple websites
When a company operates in different countries, it works with different currencies and fiscal regulations. This is why OroCommerce Enterprise Edition offers multisite management functionalities which allow companies to easily monitor and oversee various companies from one central administration console.
Content Management System
Managing the tree structure with nodes and assign content across nodes. Note that contents can be subject to access rights depending on the profile of the B2B client.
OroCommerce content management system ensures that the services and products offering are published with a good level of details. This is also true for non-catalog contents (web pages). The administration interface is simple and user-friendly. It allows to play with content nodes where any type of content can be assigned : category, landing page, product… An administrator can thus easily integrate different contents within the main menu.
Managing personalized B2B catalogs
The visibility of the product is defined depending on the site, the group of clients, or even for one specific client.
A seller can personalize the offer for a specific client, regardless of its level : company, subsidiary, department, buyer… This service is very popular with B2B clients because it saves time in products research, thanks to an offering focused on their needs.
List of multiple prices
An example of a price listing, client view. The prices displayed are the ones that apply to this client. The products in the cart or in the purchase list are highlighted.
For sure, OroCommerce is able to manage baseline prices and promotional prices, but it is also able to personalize them depending on the client and on negotiated contracts. A same company can purchase products or services at different prices, depending on the department that is ordering them !
List of multiple purchases
A client can create several purchase lists with different products and comments. Each list can be transformed into a quotation or an order (depending on the rights given to the user).
Buyers working on different projects can manage several purchases lists in OroCommerce. Thus, they can put aside products, prepare the purchase decisions internally before asking for the quotation or the purchase order.
Seamless and efficient relationship buyer-seller
The client has access to an efficient interface to make requests for quotations. Prices per quantity are clearly displayed and messages from the seller (negotiation, personalized offer, precisions) appear in the quotation.
OroCommerce facilitates the relationship buyer-seller thanks to its traceability and a detailed follow up of the requests made by buyers : quotations, purchase orders, order follow up…
Segmentation and personalized reports
Dashboard, reporting tool and advanced segmentation functionalities provide sellers with precise data on their activity. They get key indicators and understand the purchase process of their clients. Important pieces of information to design targeted marketing campaigns.
Workflow management
Workflow example to manage the order funnel and its key steps.
OroCommerce offers a very detailed workflow management system that separates it clearly from its competitors and offers to B2B suppliers a secure and formal framework. Based on OroCRM components, it can use any attribute of the platform (client, order, task…) and set clear and mandatory processing steps : purchase funnel, quotation management, abandonned carts, prospecting, personalized alerts, etc.
OroCommerce CE / EE comparison
CE Edition is suitable for small B2B suppliers, evolving in a local market. Larger companies or with international presence will prefer functionalities proposed by the EE Edition. Below is a chart summarizing all functionalities of OroCommerce Community Edition and Enterprise Edition.
Key functionalities
| OroCommerce CE | OroCommerce EE | |
| Enterprise account | O | O |
| Multiple list of purchases | O | O |
| Multiple prices and prices personalization | O | O |
| Simplified buyer-seller relationship | O | O |
| Segmentation and personalized reporting | O | O |
| Multiple sites | O | |
| Multiple organizations | O | |
| Multiple currencies | O | |
| Multiple deposits | O |
Technologies
| OroCommerce CE | OroCommerce EE | |
| Access control list | O | O |
| CMS | O | O |
| High volume support | O | |
| PostgreSQL database | O | |
| Elastic Search | O | |
| Job queue server | O |
Support
| OroCommerce CE | OroCommerce EE | |
| User guide, technical documentation | O | O |
| Forums | O | O |
| Technical support 24/7 (phone, email) | O |
To summarize
OroCommerce seems well designed, thanks to its large coverage of B2B needs. In its Enterprise version, it could become a serious competitor of the heavy sized competitors of the sector, such as Intershop, SAP Hybris or Oracle Commerce which costs and implementation lead time are not comparable. It will also be the main competitor of Magento B2B edition which should be released in the last quarter of 2017.
OrocCommerce and OroCRM integration is real asset. In general, first feedbacks are positive (from clients as well as technical teams), especially because the editors plays its role of projects support.
Obviously, five months after its release, OroCommerce solution has not confirmed its real operational capacity. It is too early to assert that it is the ideal solution for complex, high volume and high traffic websites. Similarly, we cannot evaluate the sustainability of technical and architecture choices as long as we do not face a wide variety of real cases.
However, OroCommerce deserves our attention and we see it grow with great interest !