Most ecommerce replatforming advice — including a good portion of our own vendor-neutral replatforming guide — is written with a consumer storefront in mind. Browse, basket, checkout, ship. For UK manufacturers selling on trade terms, that model barely resembles what the platform actually needs to do. Account-specific pricing, credit limits, multi-buyer company hierarchies, and a B2B trade portal that runs alongside or instead of a consumer storefront all change the shape of a replatform project — not just its complexity, but the order in which decisions need to be made.

This article goes deeper on the B2B-specific mechanics our main replatforming guide only introduces. If you haven't read that one yet, start there for the underlying decision framework — when replatforming is justified, the honest cost picture, and the questions worth asking before you brief an agency. This piece assumes you've made that case and are now working out what's actually different about doing it on B2B trade terms.

Why B2B replatforming is a harder migration than it looks

A consumer ecommerce migration moves a product catalogue, a set of customer accounts, and an order history. A B2B trade portal migration moves all of that plus a pricing model that's frequently unique to each customer, a credit and payment terms structure tied to your ERP or finance system, and often a company hierarchy where one account has multiple buyers with different permissions and price visibility. None of this maps cleanly onto a generic ecommerce data migration tool, which is built around the assumption that price is the same for every customer looking at the same product.

This is the detail most replatforming timelines and budgets get wrong. The product catalogue migration is usually the easy part. The pricing logic, account hierarchy, and credit terms migration is where B2B replatform projects actually go over time and over budget — and it's rarely scoped properly because it doesn't look complicated until someone tries to migrate it.

Account-specific pricing: the migration problem nobody quotes for upfront

Most UK manufacturers selling B2B have some form of customer-specific pricing — negotiated rates, volume tiers, contract pricing tied to specific SKUs. On your current platform, this pricing logic may live in the ecommerce platform, in the ERP, in a separate pricing engine, or — more often than anyone wants to admit — across all three with no single source of truth. A replatform project forces this question whether you're ready for it or not: which system will be the source of truth for pricing on the new platform, and how does account-specific pricing for every existing customer get migrated without errors that show up as a wrong price on a real order.

The honest answer is that this needs to be mapped and tested extensively before go-live, not discovered during it. A pricing error on a B2B account is rarely a minor inconvenience — it's either an under-charge that costs margin or an over-charge that damages a trade relationship you've likely spent years building.

Trade portal functionality: built-in or bolted on

Platforms vary significantly in how natively they handle B2B trade functionality. Some treat company accounts, multi-buyer hierarchies, and tiered pricing as core capability. Others treat B2B as an add-on to a fundamentally consumer-oriented platform, requiring third-party applications or custom development to approximate functionality that a B2B-native platform handles by default. This distinction matters enormously for a replatform decision and is frequently underweighted in favour of brand familiarity or what an agency is comfortable building.

The right question isn't "can this platform do B2B" — most vendors will say yes. The right question is whether B2B functionality is native to the platform's data model, or layered on top of it. The difference shows up later, usually as a limitation nobody anticipated when a specific account structure or pricing rule doesn't fit what the bolted-on B2B layer was actually built to handle.

ERP integration for trade accounts, not just retailer EDI

This is a different integration problem from the EDI compliance work we cover in our FMCG-specific ERP and EDI integration guide, which focuses on major retailer compliance standards. For a B2B manufacturer selling on trade terms, the integration priority is usually different: real-time stock visibility for trade buyers, credit limit checks at the point of order, and account-specific pricing and catalogue access, all synced reliably with whatever ERP holds the commercial source of truth.

A replatform project should map exactly which of these integration points exist today, which would carry over to a new platform without rebuild, and which would need to be redeveloped. This audit belongs in the same Replatform Impact Model™ scoping we apply to every replatform engagement — before a platform is selected, not after.

What to check before replatforming a B2B trade portal

Pricing logic source of truth. Confirm definitively whether your ERP, your current ecommerce platform, or a separate system is the source of truth for account-specific pricing, and what happens to that logic on the new platform.

Account hierarchy and buyer permissions. Map every company account with multiple buyers, and confirm the new platform can replicate the permission and visibility structure your trade customers currently rely on.

Credit terms and payment integration. Confirm how credit limits and payment terms are checked at the point of order today, and whether that integration carries over or needs rebuilding.

Native B2B capability vs bolted-on functionality. Assess whether your shortlisted platforms handle B2B trade functionality natively or require third-party applications to approximate it — this affects both cost and long-term flexibility.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is replatforming a B2B trade portal different from a standard ecommerce migration?

The core difference is data complexity, not just functionality. A B2B migration has to move account-specific pricing, credit terms, and multi-buyer company hierarchies accurately — none of which exist in a typical consumer ecommerce migration. The product catalogue migration is usually the straightforward part; the commercial logic migration is where B2B replatform projects most often go over time and budget.

Can our account-specific pricing migrate automatically to a new platform?

Not reliably, in most cases. Pricing logic needs to be mapped from its current source of truth — whether that's your ERP, your existing ecommerce platform, or a separate pricing engine — and tested extensively against real account scenarios before go-live. Treating this as a simple data export and import is one of the most common causes of pricing errors after a B2B replatform.

Which ecommerce platforms handle B2B trade functionality natively?

This changes as platforms develop their B2B capability, so it's worth assessing current functionality directly against your specific requirements rather than relying on general reputation. The more useful question is whether B2B functionality — company accounts, tiered pricing, multi-buyer hierarchies — is built into the platform's core data model or added through third-party applications, since that affects long-term flexibility and cost.

How long does a B2B trade portal replatform typically take?

Longer than a comparable consumer ecommerce replatform, primarily because of pricing and account hierarchy migration complexity. A realistic B2B replatform — including ERP integration for trade accounts, pricing migration, and testing against real account scenarios — typically takes seven to twelve months from platform selection to full go-live, depending on the number of pricing rules and account structures involved.

Should we replatform our B2B trade portal and our DTC storefront at the same time?

Not necessarily, and in many cases not advisedly. Combining both into a single replatform project increases risk and complexity significantly. Many UK manufacturers are better served by sequencing the two — replatforming whichever channel carries the more urgent commercial risk first, then approaching the second with lessons learned from the first.

Further reading

Should You Replatform Your Ecommerce Site? A Vendor-Neutral Decision Framework · How to Choose the Right Ecommerce Platform for Your B2B Trade Portal · B2B Ecommerce for UK Manufacturers: The Commercial Opportunity · Replatform Impact Map

If a B2B trade portal replatform is the decision in front of you, talk to Right Partners. No platform agenda, no agency bias — an honest scoping of what your specific account and pricing structure actually requires before any platform is selected.