BigCommerce B2B: The Complete Guide to Scaling Your Business
Learn how to scale your BigCommerce B2B business with the right tools, processes, and data foundations.
- Sean Purdy
- December 30, 2025
- 3:53 pm
Table of Contents
What You'll Learn:
Why BigCommerce B2B is transforming how manufacturers and distributors sell online
How product data complexity undermines company growth without proper management systems
Which BigCommerce B2B Edition features drive operational efficiency and revenue
Why PIM software is essential for managing complex B2B product catalogs
What strategies help scale your BigCommerce B2B ecommerce operations effectively
The BigCommerce B2B market is positively exploding. As wholesale commerce continues to transform, brands that sell to other brands face a unique challenge: managing increasingly complex data across multiple channels.
BigCommerce allows management of multiple business to business and business to consumer storefronts (or region-specific sites) from a single dashboard. This simplifies operations for businesses that have diverse customer bases. In addition, BigCommerce is more feature-rich than Shopify is, right out of the box when it comes to business to business needs.It’s a preferred choice for businesses that need robust functionality without a ton of customization.
The BigCom platform is undoubtedly a powerful solution for manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers who wish to modernize their operations. But here’s what many businesses discover too late: your e-commerce store is only as strong as the product data you put into it.
While BigCommerce offers robust functionality without extensive customization, businesses requiring extensive customization may find Adobe Commerce a better fit, albeit with a larger investment. Adobe Commerce is ideal for businesses needing extensive customization and offers flexibility for highly tailored solutions.
1. Understanding BigCommerce B2B Edition's Capabilities
Why it matters: BigCommerce B2B Edition offers specialized tools that are designed specifically for business to business transactions. These differ significantly from consumer transactions. It also supports different payment methods such as net payment terms for invoices.
The global business to business e-commerce market reached $32.11 trillion in 2025, growing at 14.5 percent annually. BigCommerce has risen to the top by offering native business to business functionality that addresses complex business needs… without customization! In addition, the subscription models include hosting and support. This reduces your maintenance costs considerably.
What sets BigCommerce B2B apart:
The BigCommerce B2B Edition scored a perfect 24 out of 24 medals in the 2025 Paradigm B2B Combines for Digital Commerce Solutions! That just goes to prove its comprehensive capabilities. The platform offers customer-specific pricing, shared catalogs, quote management – you name it – right out of the box. Your sales reps can log in and place orders on behalf of their clients!
In addition to this, the B2B Edition helps your business manage customer credit limits and track payment histories. Built in SEO features like customizable URLs and metadata management further enhance the platform’s ability to improving search rankings. Naturally, this drives traffic.
Legacy platforms require heavy developer resources, but B2B Edition offers quick deployment with lower total cost of ownership. New enhancements include Configure Price Quote (CPQ) capabilities and Multi-Company Account Hierarchy; this lets you manage accounts efficiently, even at enterprise scale.
Your software comes with key features that you’re going to love.
You can create custom catalogs for different customer groups
Buyer portal access that allows customers to view their previous orders and request quotes
Invoice portal functionality exists for seamless payment processing
Shopping lists enable easy reorders for your repeat customers
The bottom line: BigCommerce gives you enterprise-grade tools at a mid-market price. It delivers the scalability that you need to support sustainable success! And unlike the competition, BigCommerce doesn’t charge transactional fees, saving you even more money.
2. Why Product Data Management Makes or Breaks B2B Success
Why it matters: Business to business product catalogs are exponentially more complex than business to consumer because of factors like custom pricing and account-specific information that needs to remain accurate.
The challenge that faces BigCommerce merchants goes way beyond simple inventory management. According to research by Allied Market Research, the global Product Information Management market was valued at $9.90 billion in 2019, and it’s projected to hit $59.25 billion by 2027. As you can see, more and more brands are finding it indispensable.
What makes B2B product data complex:
Business to business catalogs will usually include:
detailed tech specs
multi-level BOMs
regulatory compliance documentation
customer-specific pricing
product variants with hundreds of configurations
digital assets like CAD files and safety data sheets
You’ll need to manage all of this data across multiple systems, while still ensuring that buyers can access accurate information to place orders or request quotes.
Well, as you could probably imagine, if this info lives in spreadsheets, email attachments, and old Word docs, company-wide errors are just one typo away. Inaccuracy in your product info directly leads to dissatisfied customers, increased returns, slow purchase processes, and erosion of trust in your brand.
The data quality crisis:
To ensure success, you need to understand just how much poor product data management slows you down. Your sales teams are wasting hours hunting down specs, and marketing is launching campaigns using outdated data. Tech support can’t answer basic product questions.
As you can imagine, this isn’t sustainable. Each touchpoint with incomplete or incorrect data through your site or storefront erodes your competitive advantage.
The bottom line: Without centralized product data management, BigCommerce becomes just another platform perpetuating the same data chaos that slows your operations and prevents you from enabling a smooth purchasing experience for customers.
3. Essential Key Features for BigCommerce B2B Growth
Why it matters: The right key features streamline complex workflows, reduce manual tasks, and create self-service experiences that modern buyers demand while improving efficiency.
The B2B Edition includes a few game-changing capabilities that set it apart it from the competition’s consumer-focused platforms. BigCommerce was built to address the operational challenges that manufacturers like you face daily… your sales teams can now build relationships rather than processing transactions.
Customer-specific catalogs and pricing:
Business to business buyers expect personalized experiences. BigCom enables this! You can create unique product catalogs and pricing for individual customers, groups, or by sales channel.
This granular control (through role-based access control) limits pricing errors, making sure that your buyers only see relevant products at the prices you’ve negotiated. For instance, a distributor could configure different pricing tiers for volume discounts.
Quote management and approval workflows:
The new CPQ system that was launched in March 2025 includes mobile-optimized interfaces. That means that your sales reps can configure product options, add products to quotes for clients, and optimize pricing in real time. Then, your customers can review the quotes and convert them to purchase orders!
Furthermore, business to business transactions usually require the ability to issue (and manage) requests for quotes, or RFQs. This enhances your negotiation, adding flexibility to your pricing chats.
Account hierarchy and permissions:
Multi-Company Account Hierarchy supports enterprise-level structures with detailed permissions. Companies can manage multiple locations from just one account. You can set purchasing limits by role, keep your invoicing centralized, and enable ordering that’s specific to location while maintaining your visibility.
BigCom also supports hierarchical account structures for corporate accounts. This allows multiple users to use a single account seamlessly. Your users can now easily set up multiple user roles with different levels of permissions for managing large accounts in BigCommerce.
Integration capabilities:
Integration capabilities: BigCommerce boasts an open SaaS architecture that enables integration with your ERP, CRM, and PIM. These integrations create one, unified ecosystem where your data flows automatically between systems. Your customers always see current inventory and delivery info, and their credit status, for instance, is within a few clicks.
The flexible APIs also allow for third party plugins; custom integrations are also possible. For this reason, BigCommerce is adaptable to your unique business needs. In face, B2B e-commerce platforms often integrate with your legacy ERP systems to automate order and inventory management. You reduce errors and improve your overall operational efficiency.
The bottom line: BigCom B2B Edition was built to address real pain points that businesses like yours face. But they require clean, structured data to deliver their full value.
4. Integrating PIM with Your BigCommerce B2B Strategy
Why it matters: Product Information Management software is the single source of product data truth for your company. It ensures that every system within your tech stack has complete and accurate data, which then enables you to efficiently manage transactions and even create shared lists of your approved products.
Integration of PIM software with BigCom is likely your critical missing piece. It’ll transform your “good platform” into an exceptional powerhouse. Without it, your business will struggle to maintain consistency when you scale, making it difficult to pay attention to data quality as you grow.
How PIM solves BigCommerce B2B challenges:
A PIM for BigCommerce creates a centralized repository for all of your product information, attributes, specifications, and digital assets. From just this one, single source, your data will automatically sync with your BigCommerce store. Customers see consistency, no matter where they find you.
PIM software eliminates the spreadsheet chaos that plagues most business to business operations. Rather than manually updating product information across multiple systems, teams can enrich data just once in the PIM, and changes will automatically propagate. This reduces errors by up to 90 percent, leaving you time to innovate instead of correcting data.
Key PIM capabilities for B2B:
Modern PIM solutions enable bulk editing of thousands of SKUs simultaneously, automated data validation ensuring completeness before publication, workflow management with permissions and approval processes, and multi-channel syndication distributing product data to all of your sales channels (including your BigCom storefront).
Digital asset management integrated within PIM connects your images, videos, technical documents and more automatically to the products they’re matched with. This will eliminate hours of manual association across your apps and platforms.
The BigCommerce PIM integration advantage:
When properly integrated, PIM and BigCom create a powerful feedback loop. Product data that was enriched within your PIM will flow to BigCom through optimized checkout processes. Order info and customer interactions flow back, giving you better data governance and allowing you to constantly improve.
Folio3 has developed an ERP connector specifically for NetSuite and Dynamics ERP which further enhances operational efficiency. BigCom B2B Edition also integrates with widely popular ERP and CRM solutions like NetSuite to streamline operations and improve data accuracy.
The bottom line: PIM software transforms BigCom B2B from a transactional platform into a strategic asset that scales with your business, enabling you to manage operations efficiently while improving the customer experience at every point of contact.
5. Scaling Your BigCommerce B2B Operations
Why it matters: Growth creates complexity, and businesses need systematic approaches to scale operations without proportionally increasing overhead or compromising the ability to place orders efficiently.
The companies succeeding with BigCommerce B2B share a common approach: they invest in foundational systems that enable scaling before they desperately need them.
Reactive infrastructure investments slow momentum and create expensive technical debt that limits future growth. BigCommerce’s user-friendly interface can lead to a faster time to market compared to more complex platforms, giving businesses a competitive edge.
Automation as a scaling strategy:
According to recent BigCommerce case studies, businesses implementing automation see dramatic efficiency gains. OK4WD reduced drop order processing from five minutes to 30 seconds, saving 12 hours weekly.
AHP Dental increased online transaction volume from 25 to 75 percent through workflow automation, allowing customers to place orders, view invoices, and access their account information without requiring sales intervention.
These results share a common foundation: clean product data managed through PIM software that feeds automated processes. Without this foundation, automation simply speeds up errors rather than eliminating them, creating friction in the sales cycle rather than removing it.
Multi-channel expansion:
As business to business buyers increasingly shop across multiple channels, businesses must maintain consistency everywhere. PIM enables efficient multi-channel management by serving as the hub that distributes accurate product information to BigCom, marketplaces, distributor portals, and digital catalogs.
This unified approach ensures buyers receive the same pricing and product details whether they access your store, request information from sales, or order through third-party platforms.
Data governance for sustainable growth:
Scaling successfully requires data governance frameworks that maintain quality as catalogs expand. PIM software enforces data standards, validates completeness, and provides visibility into product information health across your entire catalog. Every SKU has the attributes it needs before you create listings or update your e-commerce presence.
International expansion:
PIM solutions support localization by managing translations, regional specifications, and market-specific requirements. This capability becomes essential as businesses expand globally, ensuring compliance and cultural relevance without creating separate product databases. Companies can scale internationally while maintaining centralized control over product data, pricing, and inventory.
The bottom line: Sustainable scaling requires investing in the infrastructure (PIM in particular) that keeps your BigCommerce B2B strategy efficient as complexity increases, enabling you to optimize workflows and maintain the feature-rich experiences that drive success.
Key Takeaways
BigCommerce B2B Edition delivers enterprise-grade features with mid-market accessibility, serving the $32 trillion global B2B e-commerce market with specialized tools for complex commercial transactions
Product data quality directly determines BigCom success, as inaccurate information undermines every customer touchpoint and operational process
PIM software serves as the critical foundation that centralizes product info, eliminates manual errors, and enables automated workflows across your entire technology ecosystem
Automation and integration drive measurable gains, with brands are reporting 90 percent error reduction and significant time savings through proper PIM implementation
Scaling requires infrastructure investment before you desperately need it, particularly in product info management systems that prevent complexity from overwhelming your process
FAQs:
What makes BigCommerce suitable for B2B e-commerce?
BigCommerce B2B Edition includes native features that were specifically designed for business to business commerce. These include customer-specific prices, quote management, account hierarchies, and complex approval workflows.
The platform scored perfectly in the 2025 Paradigm B2B Combines, demonstrating its comprehensive business to business capabilities. Unlike consumer-focused platforms, BigCommerce can handle the complexity of business to business transactions without expensive customization.
Why do BigCommerce B2B merchants need PIM software?
Business to business catalogs contain vastly more complex data than consumer products. Yours may include tech specs, custom pricing, regulatory docs, or account-specific information. Managing this complexity in spreadsheets or directly in BigCommerce becomes unsustainable as businesses scale.
PIM software creates a single source of truth that ensures data accuracy across all channels while enabling efficient bulk operations and automated syndication.
How does PIM integration improve BigCommerce B2B performance?
When you integrate PIM with BigCommerce, you all but eliminate the need for manual data entry. You also reduce errors by up to 90 percent, and you accelerate your time to market for your new launches.
PIM is the central hub where your teams can enrich your data one time, then automatically syndicate it to BigCommerce and your other sales channels. The result? Consistency across customer touchpoints while you free your teams from repetitive administrative tasks.
What features should I look for in BigCommerce B2B Edition?
Essential BigCommerce B2B edition includes customer-specific catalogs and pricing as well as quote management with approval workflows. It offers multi-company account hierarchies with role based access control, sales rep masquerading, and bulk order functionality. But wait, there’s more! The platform integrates smoothly with your ERP, CRM, and PIM systems.
Can BigCommerce handle complex B2B product catalogs?
BigCommerce B2B Edition manages complex catalogs effectively when integrated with proper product data management systems.
While the platform provides robust B2B functionality, businesses with large catalogs, numerous product variations, or technical specifications benefit significantly from implementing PIM software that structures and organizes product information before syncing to BigCommerce.
How quickly can businesses implement BigCommerce B2B?
Implementation timelines vary based on catalog complexity and integration requirements. BigCommerce offers faster deployment than legacy platforms, with some businesses launching within weeks.
However, companies investing time in proper product organization through PIM before migration experience smoother launches and better long-term results than those rushing implementation without foundational data management.
What ROI can businesses expect from BigCommerce B2B?
An IDC study found that BigCommerce B2B Edition delivers 391 percent three-year ROI with a 7-month payback period. Brands report average annual benefits of $393,446 per 1,000 customers, 24 percent sales productivity gains, and 82 percent improvements.
These results reflect the operational efficiencies gained through automation, self-service capabilities, and integrated systems that reduce manual overhead. Cloud-based infrastructure supports scalability without performance issues or the need for frequent software migrations, ensuring long-term reliability.
Sean Purdy
