Discuss your projectTrade customers sign in and see their contract prices, terms, current stock, and purchase history, with approval rules per company. Every purchase lands in the ERP, so your team stops re-keying emails.
Illustration of a trade ordering platform built by Baybloom: an account with contract pricing and live stock, an order with the company’s approval rule, and status back from the ERP.
Distributors, manufacturers, and suppliers whose trade customers still order by phone, email, and spreadsheet because the website cannot show their prices, their terms, or their history. The ERP already holds all of it; the ordering platform puts it in front of the customer.
The workflow
The steps we see most often in this kind of operation.
Features
Buyers paste part numbers, upload a spreadsheet, or scan barcodes to build large orders without clicking through the catalog one item at a time.
Accounts with many sites choose the delivery address, requested date, and site contact per order, with restrictions set by the buyer’s company.
Buyers keep lists for recurring jobs or sites and schedule repeat orders, which suits trade customers who buy the same items on a cycle.
Specifications, data sheets, safety documents, and images attached to each product, so buyers can check compatibility without calling your team.
Orders are checked against the account’s credit limit and terms from the ERP, with holds routed to your credit team instead of failing silently.
Customers raise returns against a past order line with a reason and photos, and your team approves, arranges pickup, and issues credit through the ERP.
Your first release
How the work runs
We start with the people doing the work and the systems around it, then write down the first release: what it includes, what it leaves for later, the integration decisions, and the acceptance criteria. Nothing is built until that scope is agreed.
We build in releases you can review as the work takes shape, using realistic data. Every release carries tests, a security review, and documentation. Integrations are tested against real records, with exceptions visible.
Your team receives the documentation, the runbooks, and the training to run the system, and we stay on for continued engineering when you want it.
Scope and price
Every project is priced from a written scope. These are the factors that move it most.
Contract prices, volume breaks, customer-specific discounts, and promotions stored in the ERP must be reproduced exactly, and complex pricing logic takes careful mapping and testing.
A modern ERP with a documented API is simpler to connect than an older system that needs file exchanges, middleware, or database-level work.
Large catalogs with inconsistent descriptions, missing images, or poor attributes need cleanup and structure before search and filters work well for buyers.
Buyer companies with many sites, spending limits, and multi-step approvals add roles, rules, and screens compared with a single buyer per account.
Building products distributor
At a building products distributor, the website usually shows list prices, so contractors email orders and someone keys each one into the ERP. A trade ordering platform signs each customer in to their contract pricing, live stock by warehouse, and order history, with approval rules for the larger companies that need them. Orders post straight to the ERP, and status, invoices, and delivery documents come back to the account. Inside sales spends its time on questions rather than typing. Punchout for the biggest buyers and a rep view for ordering on a customer’s behalf can follow.
Questions
What buyers ask before a project like this starts.
For consumer retail, use one. For trade customers with contract pricing, terms, approvals, and an ERP that owns the truth, the platform has to be built around the ERP, and standard platforms fight that.
No. The ERP stays the owner of products, prices, stock, and invoices. The platform reads from it and posts orders to it.
Yes. Each customer’s terms come from the ERP, and card payment is available where you want it, through a payment provider.
Punchout and EDI usually come in a later release once the platform is proven with the rest of the customers.
Start with the customers who order most often, give them logins with their prices already loaded, and let reps walk them through a first order. Reorder from history and live stock tend to do the rest, and the platform can report which accounts still order by email so your team knows where to follow up.
Product records stay in the ERP, while richer content such as descriptions, images, and documents can live in a product information tool or an admin area built into the platform. Your team edits content in one place, and the platform combines it with ERP prices and stock for each customer.
Each customer sees only its own prices, orders, and documents, enforced on the server and tested in every release. Users sign in with roles their company manages, sign-in follows current security practice, and your team can see who ordered what, when, and under which approval.