What the solution is
Abakion B2B Ecommerce is a webstore from Abakion A/S in Copenhagen, consisting of two apps installed in Business Central: B2B Ecommerce and Master Data Information. The first delivers the storefront, the second is the product information part. The store is hosted on Microsoft Azure as part of the subscription.
The solution is exclusively for login-based selling. There is no open storefront, and that is not a gap that can be configured away but a consequence of the architecture: the whole price mechanism rests on the customer being known in Business Central. If you also sell to anonymous consumers, you need a different solution, or another solution alongside.
How the integration works
There is no integration in the ordinary sense, because there are not two systems. When the customer puts an item in the basket, a sales quote is created in Business Central, and the price is calculated there. The basket is therefore not a copy of an ERP document, it is the ERP document.
It is the most direct of the models the catalogue describes, and it removes an entire class of operational problems. There is no synchronisation that can stall, no queue of failed orders and no situation where the store shows a price the ERP does not know.
The price for it is that the store's response time follows Business Central, and that every basket action is a write in the ERP. Ask to see how a basket with thirty lines behaves, and ask for a figure on how many concurrent users the setup has been tested with. Only Business Central online is documented, so if you run on-premises, that is the first question.
Prices, discounts and agreements
The pricing logic is Business Central's own, with no intermediary. Customer-specific prices, agreed prices, volume discounts, discount groups, customer-specific assortment and credit limit are read and calculated by the ERP, because the quote already sits there.
There is therefore no flat price matrix, and the scaling trap of customers times items does not exist either. That is the most important technical difference between this solution and the synchronised alternatives, and it matters most to the company with many customers each on their own terms.
The downside is the same as with the other ERP-driven solutions. There is no independent campaign layer in the store, so a campaign is created in Business Central. Product bundles rest on the ERP's own bills of material, and that is worth having demonstrated if you sell bundle deals.
The order and the finance function
The document in Business Central is a sales quote. That is an important detail and not a technicality: a quote is not a commitment, and it leaves a natural place for a salesperson or an approver to see the order before it becomes a sales order. For some companies that is exactly the control they lack. For others it is an extra step to be automated away.
Because the document is created directly, there is no state where the order exists in the store but not in the accounts. Partial shipments, back orders, returns and credit memos follow the ERP's own processes.
VAT is calculated by Business Central, and the solution supports Avalara AvaTax as an option without development. For a company selling in several countries, that is a real difference between this solution and the ones where VAT is decided in the storefront.
Who the solution fits
The solution fits a wholesaler, manufacturer or distributor selling to known customers, running Business Central online, and wanting self-service without operating one more system. The built-in product information module is part of the answer to the item card in Business Central being thin, and that is an item which otherwise often becomes a project of its own.
It also fits the company that wants to start small. Pricing starts low enough that a B2B portal can be tried without an investment decision, and not many solutions in the catalogue allow that.
The solution does not fit consumer selling, and it does not fit a brand living off its visual expression and its editorial content. The design and content part is the weakest, and there is no CMS in the solution.
What to settle before you decide
Pricing is public, which is rare in this market. There are three tiers: under one hundred active customers and under fifteen hundred items at one thousand six hundred and eighty Danish kroner a month, under one thousand customers and under five thousand items at three thousand six hundred and eighty kroner a month, and a tier with no limits at six thousand six hundred and eighty kroner a month. The start-up project costs forty-five thousand kroner at a fixed price.
Note that the tier limits are guidelines and not enforced ceilings. The vendor states that it does not throttle. That is a pleasant policy, but it is a policy and not a guarantee, so it belongs in the agreement if you sit close to a tier boundary.
If you run several companies in Business Central, settle what that means for the licence. Our large scenario assumes one subscription per company, and that is an estimate, not a quoted price. Ask also for an answer on on-premises and on the number of concurrent users the setup has been tested with.