Project Name
How a B2B2B Marketplace Enhanced Operational Efficiency With a Custom Magento Solution
The client needed to develop a B2B2B marketplace setup that could unify all business entities within a single system, providing a seamless interface to view and manage operations. However, managing a three-tier business application within one system posed significant complexity. To address this, new functionalities for communication and management were required, ensuring that each stakeholder had access to the necessary sections to fulfill their roles efficiently. The key entities involved in this business operation included Website Administrators, Vendor Companies, Vendor Company Employees, and Customers.
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 Fulfillment: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.
The key challenges faced by our developers during the development of the marketplace were:
- Service Architecture Enhancement: Added custom attributes to products in the Magento EAV structure, enabling seamless service order management without order conflicts.
- Vendor Portal Implementation: Developed a dedicated vendor portal to streamline operations for new stakeholders in the system.
- Reusable Service Templates: Enabled vendors to create customizable service subscriptions, improving flexibility and personalization.
- Subscription Renewal Mechanism: Introduced an automated renewal system to prevent pricing conflicts and provide clear renewal pricing details.
- Order Request & Approval System: Implemented mechanisms for order modifications, offering enhanced flexibility for customers, vendors, and administrators.
- Custom Pricing Feature: Allowed vendors to set unique pricing for each order request, enhancing pricing flexibility.
- Integrated Chat System: Developed an in-platform communication feature for seamless interaction between customers, vendors, and administrators.
- Regional Payment Gateway Integration: Secured online transactions by integrating a regional payment gateway using open API endpoints.
- Customer API Development: Created API endpoints for customer-related services, facilitating smooth mobile application integration.
- Third-Party Payment Gateway Integration: Configured Magento as a callback application to enable secure payment processing through API endpoints.
- Open API for Vendor Management: Developed an open API endpoint to sync vendor company details between external systems and Magento.
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.
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