Enterprise eCommerce Platforms: Discover the Best Software Solutions in 2023

B2B enterprise ecommerce is more than just B2B business. Defined as an extensive, globally integrated sales environment with multifaceted internal and external structures, it requires specific approaches, much effort, and trusted software to control everything.

This enterprise ecommerce software is meticulously crafted to fulfill the intricate needs of large-scale businesses. Equipped with a robust suite of features and functionalities, the key capability of such software is to fuel businesses’ quest for continual innovation.

Enterprise ecommerce search for such a complex business is always a challenge. It demands thorough risk assessments and capability evaluations of industry-leading solutions. Sometimes, it takes months to decide on a vendor finally. This article aims to address these topics and provide a comparative analysis of the leading enterprise ecommerce solutions in 2023.

1. WHY CHOOSING THE RIGHT ENTERPRISE ECOMMERCE PLATFORM IS CRUCIAL
2. ENTERPRISE ECOMMERCE CHALLENGES, RISKS, AND SOFTWARE CAPABILITIES TO COVER THEM
3. THE PERFECT SOFTWARE TO MITIGATE THE RISKS
4. BENEFITS OF USING ENTERPRISE ECOMMERCE SOLUTIONS
5. TOP 8 ENTERPRISE ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS COMPARISON
6. WHAT ELSE TO CONSIDER WHEN CHOOSING AN ENTERPRISE ECOMMERCE PLATFORM
7. ENTERPRISE ECOMMERCE SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTATION
8. VIRTO COMMERCE EXPERTISE AND EXPERIENCE
9. CONCLUSION AND FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS
10. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQS) ABOUT ENTERPRISE ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

Up to 87%¹ of B2B customers would switch suppliers whom they find too difficult to do business with. Around 40%² will not buy anything if the website is not localized. 53% of users³ will leave the site if it is too slow on mobile.

The market keeps constantly growing and changing. To stand out from the competitors and meet customers' ever-rising expectations, ecommerce enterprises must innovate accordingly. Sometimes, trying to keep up leads to replatforming.

Enterprise replatforming is always huge; it requires many resources and brings particular challenges. The mistake in choosing a new platform can lead to business degradation requiring another replatforming. This happens when, in two or three years, a business realizes its new platform no longer supports fast innovations.

Below, we outline the main risks related to the wrong platform choice and clarify how to mitigate them.

The key attribute of enterprises is huge internal digital ecosystems. They include ERP, CRM, warehouse management, data repositories, etc. Due to an incredibly complex enterprise landscape, different IT teams of the same platform may never meet, leading to unawareness of what the company needs. All this poses integration-related risks. 

First, integrating many internal and external services (such as logistics providers, partner company systems, etc.) can cause system lagging. 

Second, these services may have different levels of integrability. While modern systems normally have a reliable API interface, legacy systems integration might be complex, lengthy, and expensive. 

Large ecosystems usually use complex interaction scenarios that require an exchange of big data between the ecommerce and third-party systems. Sometimes, external systems might need access to ecommerce data and the capability to manage them. 

As the number of integrations keeps growing, it is impossible to forecast what data and functions will be needed in a year or two. This means that ecommerce must be able to provide API access to any function and data. 

"API-first" means that the platform prioritizes APIs at the very beginning of the software development process and uses them to connect different blocks of the software. The solution would rather use simple, standard, and fast APIs than create an additional (similar) code. 

This approach ensures that absolutely any data and function (native or customized) are accessible through APIs, both for the platform and third-party systems. The platform can be integrated with any number of external systems at the speed (and price) of such third-party apps.

Deloitte says, “Customer Experience enters the B2B battlefield.” And that’s true: the numerous and diverse clients and complex business processes push companies to create unique and intricate CX (customer journey) scenarios. An enterprise ecommerce platform must support these scenarios. 

Another challenge is the omnichannel trend. According to McKinsey, B2B companies have to implement this trend in their operations after B2C and D2C businesses as an increasing number of B2B customers expect that even the most complex interaction scenarios should be available online: contract management, CPQ, subscriptions, access to product specifications, contract-based pricing and so on. 

These complex and unique processes are constantly upgrading in response to market changes. Thus, the company must be confident that it can quickly build new features and scenarios, not limited by out-of-the-box capabilities. 

Affordability is another crucial aspect of innovation: enterprises must strive for a faster pace of innovation while keeping costs relatively low.

The innovation-native platform architecture must be tailored to continuous changes. While outdated platforms offer various capabilities out of the box, modern architecture usually offers a methodology for adding new features. It guarantees that the solution remains transparent, manageable, and still innovation-ready after several years of continuous development. 

Typically, such an approach involves: 

• Open-source code. 
• An embedded and documented extensibility framework. 
• A modular architecture. 
• API readiness. 
• Modern architectural management techniques. 

For example, the Virto Commerce team has developed Virto Atomic Architecture™. All of Virto's ecommerce enterprise solutions are built on this architecture. Virto Atomic Architecture enables enterprise ecommerce developers to continuously enhance the customer experience while still maintaining code transparency and a high speed of feature delivery.

Large-scale operational activities are usual for corporations. For digitally successful ones, this means a large volume of online revenue. As the load may grow over time, it is necessary to ensure the system guarantees robust and seamless scalability to process it all. 

Sometimes, a company's share of online revenue increases as the customer communication channels enhance. Companies often replatform after realizing that their current platform provides only a small part of the revenue due to the poor CX and no capabilities to improve it. After successful replatforming, the revenue increases. But would the new platform be able to handle this growth? 

Another possible change is the unpredictable volume growth caused by new business models and entry into new markets. A nice example is that one of our clients, a large book retailer, started building its digital channels with 100,000 SKUs only. Then, the company adopted a new marketplace model, and the catalog's volume grew rapidly. When the catalog size exceeded one million SKUs, the ecommerce platform performance decreased. At this point, the company replatformed to Virto and continued growing, with over 20 million SKUs today (around 200 times bigger than it was in the beginning).  

One more example relates to the number of orders the system can process. One of our clients used their ecommerce platform in the region with a low number of orders (a few thousand per month). The team didn’t know what to expect next but implemented Virto assuming that future transactions would grow. And the decision was right. Later, they entered other markets, where the sales exceeded 1 million orders per month, sometimes reaching 40-50 orders per second.

We cannot predict the future, but we must be prepared for sudden growth.

Modern technologies’ architecture allows for unlimited scalability. Solutions that were initially designed for cloud scalability are called cloud-native.  

While cloud-based means only hosting an ecommerce solution in the cloud, cloud-native is not the same. Such systems can activate additional resources when realizing that the overload is happening. As a result, these systems can intelligently increase or decrease resource consumption, ensuring that users do not experience any discomfort. This is why it is essential to ensure the platform is cloud-native and can handle significant increases in workload. 

Large corporations are often present in multiple regions and require multinational features. These regional peculiarities are not only about different catalogs, currencies, or taxes but also include standard business practices, customer expectations and habits, the level of technological maturity of customers and regions, and so on. 

One of the key challenges in building a multiregional ecommerce is to achieve a proper balance between centralization and decentralization. McKinsey defines this challenge as "being as global as possible and local as necessary." What does it mean? 

Some corporations aim to use centrally developed solution. It helps to pay for the solution development once and use it across various regions forever. However, no OOTB solution can embrace different regions. You can try creating a huge and heavy solution with all features, but conflicting requirements and the high cost of such an experiment will most possibly fail the project.    

Another option is full decentralization, where each region invests in developing its own ecommerce solution. While this is a flexible approach, the associated costs, and risks are unreasonably high because each region acts as a separate company, endlessly duplicating functions and capabilities. While it demands significant budgets, you also cannot accumulate your knowledge in a centralized way, inevitably leading to splitting into several separate businesses instead of one enterprise.

An ecommerce platform should enable the development of a unified core version of the platform in a centralized manner while allowing the addition of local business capabilities at the regional level. At the same time, updates from the global team should not affect or break the changes made locally.  

This is how the global team accumulates expertise, aggregates best practices, and translates them into regions. Meanwhile, regions enjoy the freedom to innovate without significant involvement from the central office. The global team can analyze local innovations and integrate the best ones into the global context. 

To implement such a strategy, the system should be divided into single responsibility modules (modular). Each module is extensible. Any module can be replaced with a third-party solution. The local teams should be able to add any new module needed.  

A robust extensibility framework is also required. The system should allow for the addition of business capabilities at any time and should not affect the capability to upgrade. This makes updates from the global team possible without disrupting local modifications.  

One more thing — the storefront should be decoupled from the backend (headless technology). This allows local teams to experiment with new channels and changes in the storefront's digital customer experience (CX). 

In the realm of enterprise ecommerce, companies often depend on third-party vendors. There are two main risks of vendor dependency:

In closed (non-open code) platforms, businesses have limited control over new releases and updates. If a vendor's schedule aligns differently with a company's needs, this can lead to delays in implementing new functionalities or improvements or, most possibly, never addressing the feature request. But if a vendor is slow to adopt the changes, their clients could fall behind their competitors, who are quicker to adapt.  

You can request these features from a vendor (did they mention its price in the initial agreement?). At best, you will get this feature quickly, but expensive; at worst — you might wait for years and not get it. 

Sometimes, companies go bankrupt. While many vendors look trusted, we never know what may happen in two, three, or five years in a fast-changing world. This is why you always need to have a recovery plan for your ecommerce platform. The perfect way to go is to align this recovery plan with your vendor.  

When SaaS/PaaS vendor goes out of business, they can just switch the solution off without prior notice and the opportunity to migrate your data. A reliable vendor will surely provide you with your data backups, but what should you do with this data without any system able to process them? Looking for a new platform would be long and probably unexpectedly expensive.  

In 2021, one of Virto's clients lost its loyalty program when the the loyalty platform provider switched off its servers. Luckily, the vendor shared data backups, and the company could build a new loyalty module on Virto just in a few weeks.

Mostly, it is a vendor's responsibility to provide you with a recovery plan that guarantees the continuity of your digital business. Using open-code platforms like Virto, you can always move the entire solution (a platform code, the infrastructure code, and data) to any other cloud subscription in case you face a force-majeure.

Everything from processing clients' data to the smallest internal processes should be done in accordance with security best practices. Besides data processing security, businesses usually encounter several security-related challenges.  

First is the system's overall technological safety, including clear and transparent architecture and code. Such a system protects itself from code breaches and offers an enterprise-level corporate technology stack using only proven code libraries. Virto Commerce recently received a SOC2 certificate confirming its readiness to comply with the highest EU and US safety standards.    

Being compliant with the GDPR is another point. Enterprise solutions like Virto provide all levels of security to avoid any data breaches. They can also anonymize data so they no longer point at any particular person or company but can still be used for big data and analytics.  

Another security consideration is role-based access capabilities. It's hardly possible anyone wants to offer full admin access to hundreds (or tens) of random employees. With modern solutions, you can provide employees with certain capabilities based on their role, while other roles might have bigger or smaller capabilities in the same solution segment. 

As we discussed the challenges enterprises face, we can describe the key capabilities to consider in an enterprise ecommerce platform.   

The platform that can bring your company strategic benefit should enable you to win the competitive race in your key markets while ensuring the optimal total cost of ownership.  

But remember that the optimal cost of ownership for an ecommerce solution includes more than the cost of licenses and implementation: always count the cost of ongoing innovations that will be necessary after the launch of the solution. 

Modular platforms consist of independent components that can be modified and even deployed separately. Various forms of modularity exist, including SOA, microservices, etc., and each offers its own pros and cons. However, any of them is better than monolithic solutions preventing the company from adequately responding to their challenges.   

With the correctly chosen architecture, modularity opens up significant opportunities for multi-regional scaling. The perfect solution allows local branches to use a standard corporate ecommerce solution in a centralized way while having enough autonomy to align it with local business practices. 

In a headless architecture, the front end is completely decoupled from the backend, and all interactions between them occur through APIs.  

In this approach, all the business logic is concentrated in an experience layer, which acts as a module consolidating all the necessary information and delivers it to the front end in a consolidated form.  

The headless architecture enables the support of a wide range of channels within a single ecommerce solution. This goes beyond just adding a mobile channel but also encompasses the addition of fundamentally different channels for various brands, audiences, regions, and more.  

For example, you can effortlessly maintain multiple B2C/D2C stores, several distributor portals, B2B2X and loyalty portals, and more — all on the same backend. 

Small businesses choose out-of-the-box features as they don't have the budget to implement a unique customer experience and have to take what the market offers. For enterprises, being like “anybody else” is unacceptable. The enterprise ecommerce platform must support unique scenarios and allow for realizing of the business logic needed without limitations and for reasonable costs. 

When choosing an enterprise ecommerce platform, it is a bad idea to ask if the platform CAN support a particular scenario (it MUST support it anyway); the right question is, HOW MUCH will the implementation of this scenario cost. 

Unique business scenarios require a built-in extensibility framework. This means the embedded capability to infinitely modify the platform's functionality in response to constantly changing business requirements and customer expectations. 

A good extensibility framework allows development teams to understand how to properly add new business capabilities and extend existing ones without disrupting its upgradability and keeping the latest stable version of the platform. 

An enterprise ecommerce platform must be ready for localization and support of multiple regions: it should support multiple fiat currencies, cryptocurrencies, and payment options. 

The catalog should support all languages to describe products. This should include product information and product property names in different languages. The company should also be able to translate the admin panel accessed by employees quickly. 

Another important capability is deploying the solution in any jurisdiction necessary. The system should easily adapt to the required tax requirements, personal data management rules, and so on.

For global operations, for example, UAE ecommerce or businesses in Saudi Arabia (as Middle-east ecommerce is very popular right now), enterprise ecommerce platforms should support multiple regions and currencies. The ability to manage different regional peculiarities, pricing structures, taxes, and currency conversions simplifies operations and provides a seamless shopping experience for customers worldwide. 

Twenty years ago, integration was expensive and risky. Modern integration practices do not use "native" and "built-in" integrations. This is why when the platform shows native integrations as an advantage, it often means that its architecture is outdated. API-first platforms offer access to all data and functions via standard and expandable APIs. 

This capability of the modern enterprise level ecommerce platforms helps them to easily and risk-free integrate into any configurations of large digital ecosystems, making them perfect for enterprises and reducing risks and costs. 

Another important point is that the API-first principle does not suppose any "internal" and "external" APIs. If the system offers these two types, it most probably attempts to add APIs to an outdated solution. 

Again, cloud-based and cloud-native are not the same. Many outdated solutions have been slightly adjusted and placed in the cloud, though their architecture doesn’t play perfectly in the cloud. 

Cloud-native means that the solution was initially designed for cloud deployment and offers all the technological advantages of the cloud approach. 

Combining cloud-native capabilities and modularity helps resolve many delicate challenges of enterprise ecommerce, such as scalability, multiregional deployment, privacy data protection considerations, and so on. 

Also, cloud-native solutions are featured with high efficiency in operational costs, as owners pay only for the necessary infrastructure resources. 

McKinsey claims that the use of open-source ecommerce brings the next wave of value for the enterprise. It allows to quickly and easily understand how the solution was built. Developers do not need any "secret knowledge" to understand how it works: the code shows everything.  

Open source makes fixing errors easier. Closed systems suppose fixing errors by a vendor long and non-transparent. With an open code, you can simply correct the code, contribute it to the platform project, and the vendor will quickly process it.  

In addition, open source means that the customer company does not crucially depend on the vendor. The vendor dependency risk is lower as the user fully controls their own instance. 

Using the right enterprise ecommerce solution gives a company many advantages, eventually leading to outpacing competitors and achieving confident market leadership. Here are the benefits modern enterprise ecommerce platforms provide:

• Fast and stable time-to-value
• Readiness for innovation
• The best CX
• Optimized TCO 

A modern enterprise level ecommerce solution allows the company to quickly design and deliver new capabilities and CX (Customer Experience) improvements to customers. 

The speed of changes in modern enterprise ecommerce solutions is so high and predictable that the company can outpace its competitors and lead in the market. This is independent of the kind of changes made in the system: new business scenarios or whole new business models, integration projects, or multiregional scaling. 

First, enterprise ecommerce platforms allow quick testing of innovative approaches and business models. 

Another advantage is high flexibility in integrations and functionality. A perfect enterprise ecommerce solution can easily incorporate any third-party innovation solutions into their work: AI engines, low-code systems for business process design, and others. 

Moreover, a great solution allows continuous improvement of CX quality over time without losing speed and increasing the cost of these changes. 

Thanks to the readiness for innovation, fast time to value, and scalability, companies can provide the best customer experience in their industry, meeting customer expectations. 

As a result, the company gains a sustainable competitive advantage, ensuring a growing market share and high customer loyalty. 

The total cost of ownership includes all the costs for launch, maintenance, and continuous improvements of an enterprise ecommerce solution. It is important to remember that an ecommerce solution is an asset that should pay off. The main focus should be on the cost of licenses and planned expenses for continuous improvements. 

A modern enterprise ecommerce solution provides businesses with an optimal total cost of ownership with a low cost of innovations and improvements. 

The total cost of ownership includes all the costs for launch, maintenance, and continuous improvements of an enterprise ecommerce solution. It is important to remember that an ecommerce solution is an asset that should pay off. The main focus should be on the cost of licenses and planned expenses for continuous improvements. 

A modern enterprise ecommerce solution provides businesses with an optimal total cost of ownership with a low cost of innovations and improvements. 

Oracle Commerce Cloud (OCC) is a cloud-based enterprise ecommerce platform offered by Oracle. It provides tools for catalog management, merchandising, pricing, inventory, and customer management. OCC integrates with third-party systems and enables businesses to create mobile-optimized experiences, leverage AI-powered personalization, and ensure security and compliance.

• Scalability and performance. The system can hold high traffic volumes and peak periods. 
• Integration capabilities. OCC integrates seamlessly with other Oracle products and third-party systems. 
• Mobile-optimized experience. Oracle supports responsive design and mobile-specific features. 

• The system is complex to set up and customize, requiring expertise and technical resources.  
• OCC's licensing and implementation costs may be higher than other ecommerce platforms. 
• Customization limitations: there may be certain limitations in terms of design flexibility and fine-grained control over certain functionalities. 
• The vendor stopped the development of this product. There will be no new features and no roadmap. 

SAP Commerce Cloud, formerly SAP Hybris, is an enterprise-level ecommerce platform offered by SAP. It provides businesses with comprehensive tools to manage their online sales and customer experience.

• SAP Commerce Cloud offers a wide range of features for catalog management, product information management (PIM), merchandising, pricing, promotions, inventory management, and order management.  
• SAP Commerce Cloud integrates well with other SAP products and systems. 

• The core technology was developed many years ago and is now very hard to extend and maintain.  
• Implementing and configuring SAP Commerce Cloud can be complex, requiring expertise and technical resources. 
• The licensing and implementation costs of SAP Commerce Cloud can be relatively high. 
• The implementation and deployment of SAP Commerce Cloud may take longer compared to some other ecommerce platforms. 

IBM WebSphere Commerce is an enterprise-level ecommerce platform provided by IBM.

• The platform offers a wide range of features for catalog management, merchandising, pricing, promotions, inventory management, and order management.
• WebSphere Commerce integrates well with other IBM products and third-party systems.

• Implementing and managing WebSphere Commerce can be complex, and the learning curve may be steep, particularly for businesses without prior experience with IBM products. 
• The licensing and implementation costs of WebSphere Commerce can be relatively high, making it more suitable for businesses with larger budgets. 
• Upgrading to newer versions of WebSphere Commerce may require careful planning and technical support. 
• Poor customization and long implementation of the new features. 
• Poor scalability.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud, formerly known as Demandware, is an enterprise-level cloud-based ecommerce platform provided by Salesforce.

• Cloud-based SaaS solution that eliminates the need for on-premises infrastructure and provides automatic updates and maintenance by Salesforce. 
• Commerce Cloud supports omnichannel retailing, allowing businesses to deliver consistent experiences across multiple touchpoints, including web, mobile, social media, and physical stores. 
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud leverages artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to provide personalized shopping experiences. 

• Poor extensibility model that doesn't allow creating unique customer experience that 100% fit business requirements, especially in B2B
• Implementing and customizing Salesforce Commerce Cloud can be complex, requiring technical expertise and resources. 
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud's licensing and implementation costs may be relatively high, and the total cost of ownership (TCO) should be carefully evaluated. 
• There are certain limitations in terms of design flexibility and fine-grained control over certain functionalities. 
• Some users have reported challenges with the level of support and training provided by Salesforce Commerce Cloud, especially for complex customizations and integrations. 

BigCommerce Enterprise is a robust and scalable ecommerce platform designed to cater to the needs of enterprise-level businesses.

• Comprehensive feature set 
• BigCommerce Enterprise offers a flexible and customizable environment, allowing businesses to tailor their online stores to their unique branding and functionality requirements.  
• BigCommerce Enterprise supports multi-channel selling by integrating with popular marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and social media platforms. 

• The cost may not be suitable for smaller businesses with limited budgets. 
• Integration limitations: although BigCommerce Enterprise offers integrations with popular third-party systems and tools, there may be limitations or additional development effort required for specific custom integrations. 
• BigCommerce Enterprise may have certain limitations in advanced functionality requirements or niche industry-specific features. Custom development may be needed for more specific business needs. 

Magento Commerce is a feature-rich and highly customizable ecommerce platform that empowers businesses to create and manage online stores. It offers a wide range of tools and functionalities to facilitate a robust online selling experience.

• Magento Commerce offers scalability and performance optimization features, ensuring a smooth shopping experience even during peak periods. 
• A comprehensive set of features for catalog management, inventory management, order processing, payments, promotions, and more. It provides a robust foundation for businesses to create engaging and personalized shopping experiences. 
• Magento has a large and active community of developers and users who contribute to the platform's growth and share knowledge. 

• Complexity and learning curve: it may have a steeper learning curve for users without prior experience with the platform or web development. 
• Managing and maintaining a Magento Commerce store may require a dedicated team of technical resources with Magento expertise.  
• The total cost of ownership (TCO) should be carefully evaluated. 
• Optimizing and fine-tuning the platform's performance may require technical expertise and ongoing monitoring to ensure optimal speed and responsiveness. 

Elastic Path is an enterprise ecommerce platform that focuses on providing flexible and highly customizable solutions for businesses.

• Elastic Path adopts a headless commerce approach, allowing businesses to decouple the front-end presentation layer from the back-end commerce engine.  
• Flexibility and customization options allow businesses to tailor their ecommerce experiences to meet unique requirements. 
• It can handle high volumes of traffic, complex product catalogs, and diverse pricing structures, ensuring a smooth and responsive ecommerce experience even during peak periods. 

• Implementing and customizing Elastic Path may require technical expertise and resources.  
• Limited Out-of-the-Box Features. Additional development or integrations may be needed to meet specific business requirements. 
• Elastic Path has a smaller community and ecosystem compared to some other ecommerce platforms. 
• While Elastic Path can offer flexibility and customization, the total cost of ownership may be higher compared to some other ecommerce platforms. Licensing, development, and ongoing maintenance costs should be carefully evaluated to ensure they align with the organization's budget and goals. 

Virto Commerce is an enterprise ecommerce platform that provides businesses with a flexible and customizable solution to build and manage their online stores. It offers a wide range of features and tools to support complex B2B and B2C ecommerce needs.

• Virto Commerce offers a highly flexible and customizable modular architecture, allowing businesses to tailor their online stores to meet specific requirements. It provides extensive customization options, including a modular design and an API-driven approach, enabling businesses to build unique ecommerce experiences. 
• Virto Commerce specializes in supporting B2B ecommerce needs. It offers features like custom pricing and discounts, advanced product configuration, multi-level customer hierarchies, and complex order management. These capabilities make it suitable for businesses with intricate B2B workflows and complex pricing structures. 
• Integration and extensibility. Virto Commerce provides robust integration capabilities, allowing seamless integration with third-party systems and tools. It supports popular integration protocols like REST and GraphQL, making integrating with existing enterprise systems and leveraging external services easier. 
• Virto enterprise ecommerce platform is designed to handle high volumes of traffic, large product catalogs, and complex business operations. It offers scalability and performance optimization features, ensuring a smooth and responsive ecommerce experience even during peak periods. 
• The headless architecture allows splitting storefront and backend and running them independently while working with the same catalog and other data. 

• Designed for implementing unique business scenarios that would not be interesting for small companies 
• Designed for rapid implementation of any unique business scenarios, so it does not have a lot of no-code configuration options. 
• Created on a modern technological stack that requires a tech team with up-to-date skills (GraphQL, declarative deployment, etc.) 

Many of the ecommerce systems listed here take their place in the market for 20+ years or more. This makes businesses believe that due to the many cases these vendors have, they can provide the highest level of scalability. In reality, some of them are not future-proof due to obsolete features and heavy stacks, making them unable to grow and customize.   

This is why when someone decides to buy IBM or SAP just because they are well-known in the market, it could be a good idea to learn more about the other systems with API-first highly scalable technologies like Virto Commerce. These are the best enterprise ecommerce solutions. 

Choosing the right enterprise ecommerce platform for your business, always go step by step from the needs clarification to the demo trying. Here are the steps:

1. Assess your business needs.

Start by evaluating your specific business requirements, goals, and long-term growth plans. Consider factors such as your target market, product range, sales volume, scalability needs, integration requirements, and budget. 

2. Research and compare platforms.

Conduct thorough research to identify potential enterprise level ecommerce platforms that align with your requirements. Consider factors such as platform reputation, customer reviews, vendor stability, and industry expertise. Request demos or free trials to get hands-on experience with the platforms.

3. Ask your vendor the right questions.

Do not forget to create a list of questions to ask your future vendor. Here are some tips on what to discuss with your vendor. Find more profound advice in our RFQ template.

Ideas on what to talk about:

• Business objectives and requirements
• Budget considerations
• Technical expertise and support
• Case Studies and Success Stories
• Real-world examples of enterprises that have successfully implemented specific platform 

4. Try demo.

Standardly, companies offer demos for free. Try to find out if the vendor can show you how the solution will work on your real tasks example. This will make the final decision easier.

Now, as the platform is chosen, it’s time to start the implementation process. 

Implementing an enterprise ecommerce platform might seem challenging, but it should take little time with the right vendor and implementation partner by your side. The MVP could be live in a few weeks if the platform was chosen correctly. Here are the main steps companies go through when replatforming or purchasing a new enterprise ecommerce system:

• Step 1. Define strategic goals. It's important to define what goals a business is pursuing by initiating a project. Setting goals as technological deliverables is bad practice; it's necessary to explicitly define business success criteria.
• Step 2. Platform Selection. Consider factors such as extensibility, scalability, time-to-value, cost of innovations, and so on. Out-of-the-box features can also play a role.
• Step 3. Define MVP scope. First, define MVP, MVP success criteria, and the launch timing. Then, the resources needed are assessed.
• Step 4. Setup, Configuration, Iterative Design, and Development. Install the ecommerce software, configure out-of-the-box functionality, and develop the missing one. After each sprint, you get a tested working system and iteratively come up with MVP.  
• Step 5. MVP Acceptance Testing. The real data are uploaded, and all the stakeholders confirm it is ready for Go Live.
• Step 6. Go-Live Preparation. All users, both on the seller's and the buyer's side, should receive information about the new system, undergo training for its use, and have support services prepared. Data transfer should also take place. The launch of the new system should not be a surprise to anyone.
• Step 7. Launch and Go-Live. Once all testing is complete and users are trained, you can launch your enterprise ecommerce platform.
• Step 8. Running Next Iterations. After the go-live, provide ongoing support to users and address any post-launch issues or enhancement requests.

Here at Virto, we always aim for the best results for our clients. As Virto Commerce is an API-first, cloud-based modern modular system with headless architecture, we are sure that the platform can provide the best experience to enterprise ecommerce of any size. Virto enterprise level commerce platform is ready to address different verticals challenges such as Retail, Aircraft building, and manufacturing.

Here’s what our clients got after replatforming to Virto:

• Faster time-to-value and all-readiness to innovations
• Greater CX and customer loyalty
• Enhanced transparent operational processes
• Higher revenues and enhanced operation
• Affordable maintenance and reduced costs. 

Enterprise ecommerce businesses are complex and have strong requirements. However, choosing the right ecommerce platform can resolve almost all issues businesses encounter, leverage businesses to a new level and increase revenue and customer loyalty.

The most important part is choosing the modern solution while avoiding the outdated ones with big names. In case you still have something to clear up and wish to learn more about modern platforms' capabilities, reach out to the Virto team or request a free demo to see how Virto Commerce can handle the real tasks of your enterprise ecommerce business. 

The answer is yes! Modern enterprise ecommerce platforms provide interfaces able to exchange any data with external systems. These systems, in turn, can interact with eCommerce platform functions via API. This means modern API-first platforms can be integrated into any scenario, including the most complex ones.

You surely can replatform. Moreover, almost every enterprise ecommerce migrated at least once. To work successfully in the long run, you have to choose the solution carefully. Many companies choose popular vendors just because they are well-known. “Nobody gets fired for buying IBM,” they say. However, migration to the wrong platform can lead to continuous migration every time the system is out of its capabilities.

What is enterprise ecommerce? An example of enterprise commerce is when a large business, such as a multinational corporation or a global retailer, engages in buying and selling goods and services on a large scale. Most of the companies with $1B+ turnover can be considered enterprises.

Virto Commerce can be considered the best enterprise ecommerce platform since it provides all necessary features, is highly scalable, offers fast time-to-value, and can be scaled together with the business. Moreover, Virto is SOC2-certified, which means the platform provides the highest level of security.

Traditional ecommerce is about one seller (or their affiliates) owning the platform and selling its products to multiple buyers. Marketplace embraces many sellers at the same platform that usually offer their products in a competitive way to the same buyers.

Virto Commerce is an open-source platform. The basic version can be used for free if the GMV is less than USD 1M (see the license agreement). Enterprise package or Marketplace are available upon the contract sign only.

Enterprise ecommerce solutions are usually bigger, they support complex scenarios, handle large loads and offer multiregional deployment. They provide great TCO when the sales volume is big and guarantee faster innovation.

Virto Commerce is a highly scalable platform. This is possible thanks to Virto Atomic Architecture™. The platform can scale up and down to handle any load needed.

The total cost of ownership of an enterprise ecommerce solution contains four important components:  

• the cost of a license, 
• operations cost,  
• project launch cost 
• and innovation cost. 

The project launch cost depends on the implementation team, while other components are based on the vendor pricing policy. Virto Commerce offers two pricing models: GMV-based and Order-based.

Yes, Virto Commerce is an open-source enterprise ecommerce platform that can be easily customized in accordance with business needs.

The market share is approximately 7.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. 

Useful links:

1. Up to 87% of B2B customers would switch suppliers whom they find too difficult to do business with.
2. Around 40% will not buy anything if the website is not localized.
3. 53% of users will leave the site if it is too slow on mobile.