Project Name
Developed B2B2B Marketplace Setup to Manage Multiple Entities
Overview
The client is required to develop a B2B2B marketplace setup that can bring all the business entities to the same system and provide a single interface to view and manage all the operations. But managing all the operations of a three-tier business application in a single system was very complex. We are required to add new functionality for communication and management to provide each stakeholder with the necessary sections of the system to fulfil their roles.
The list of entities included in this business operation was
1. Website Administrators
2. Vendor Companies
3. Vendor company employees
4. Customers
Challenges
The key challenges faced by our developers during the development of the marketplace were:
- Magento limitations: Magento out of the box only supports one-time orders and does not have any feature to modify the contents of an existing order. Implementing any change to already-created orders can cause multiple issues with order calculation and totalling. Also, it was challenging to override this modification in the same order, as Magento primarily relies on the quote architecture.
- Renewal mechanism: The renewal of the same order resulted in certain calculation conflicts as the price of the service varied between the renewal date and the order date. It had taken various discussions to decide which price needed to be applied.
- Order fulfilment: Each service type had its own unique fulfilment process, which resulted in a distinct chain of order statuses. Implementing this also posed several challenges on the admin and vendor sides.
- Vendor Portal: The vendor portal introduced an interface with extensive access to orders and other parts of the website. This access required some additional control by the admin, using the permission feature, to allow specific permissions and roles for each type of vendor.
Our Solution
The key challenges faced by our developers during the development of the marketplace were:
- Implemented a service architecture by adding custom attributes to products in the Magento EAV structure to reuse them for service orders. This helped to manage the services effectively, and the changes in the order did not cause any issues.
- Implemented a complete vendor portal that helped the new stakeholder in the system to manage all the operations.
- Created reusable templates to allow vendors to create different service subscriptions for the same type of service. This made the website more flexible and enabled the vendors to customize their services according to their requirements.
- Added the subscription renewal mechanism, which helped to avoid calculation conflicts while renewing the same order. The mechanism also provided the necessary information about the renewal price, making it easier to decide which price needs to be applied.
- Added the order request and approval mechanisms, along with the ability to change the contents of the order. This feature provided more flexibility to the customers, vendors, and admin in managing the orders effectively.
- Added the functionality to set custom prices for each product in every order request, making the website more flexible. This feature allowed the vendors to customize their prices according to their requirements.
- Implemented a chat feature for communication between customers, vendors, and admin. This feature helped to streamline the communication process and improve the overall customer experience.
- Integrated a regional payment gateway using the open API endpoints. It helped to provide a secure payment gateway for customers and vendors to carry out transactions.
- Created API endpoints for all the customer-related services to integrate them with the mobile application. It helped to improve the overall customer experience and made the website more accessible to customers.
- API Development and Integration
- The third-party payment gateway was integrated by setting Magento as the callback application to trigger and receive information from the API endpoints.
- An open API endpoint was implemented that allowed an existing system to update the Magento instance with vendor company details.
Conclusion
The B2B2B marketplace setup resulted in a seamless and efficient system for managing all the operations of the business entities. The custom attributes, reusable templates, subscription renewal mechanism, order request and approval mechanism, custom pricing, and chat feature helped to streamline the process and provide more flexibility to the customers, vendors, and admin. The integration of the payment gateway and API endpoints improved the overall customer experience.
Streamline Your Business Operations With Our
Magento B2B Multivendor Setup Solutions!
Streamline Your Business Operations With Our
Magento B2B Multivendor Setup Solutions!
