B2B e-commerce: when email orders stop being enough

The order lands at six in the evening, by email. Inside there is a list of product codes typed by hand, two of which no longer match the price list, and a line that says “same as last time, but double”. The next morning someone in the office opens it, checks stock, calls the customer about the two wrong codes and keys everything into the management system. The company’s catalogue has been online for years, and it is a good one. But the channel customers actually buy through is still the inbox.

We see this often in Tuscany, in companies that sell to other companies: resellers, workshops, distributors, many of them abroad. It is nothing to be embarrassed about. It is a way of working that served well for a long time and at some point stops holding up. The useful question is not whether you “need B2B e-commerce”, but when the way you receive orders today has crossed the threshold, and what is really needed in its place.

A note for readers outside Italy: the figures below come from Italian and European official statistics and describe the Italian market. If you sell into Italy through local distributors, or run an Italian company from abroad, they describe your customers and your competitors.

Selling online in Italy already means selling to businesses

When people talk about online sales they picture a consumer with a shopping cart. The numbers tell a different story. Among Italian enterprises with at least 10 employees that sell via the web, almost seven in ten (68.5%) count other businesses or public bodies among their customers: that is what Istat, the national statistics institute, found in its 2025 survey, which for sales covers the year 2024. And if you look at turnover rather than at the number of companies, Eurostat data from the same survey show that web sales are worth 5.3% of Italian enterprises’ turnover, and more than half of that share, 3.2 points out of 5.3, comes from customers that are businesses or public bodies.

Then there is a second channel that gets little attention because it is invisible. It is called EDI, the automatic exchange of orders and documents between the buyer’s system and the seller’s, in a format the two have agreed on: nobody types anything. Only 4.6% of Italian enterprises use it to sell, against 17.6% that sell via the web. Yet 10.3% of turnover flows through it, roughly twice all web sales. Among digital channels, by value, the first is not the website: it is system-to-system exchange. But it is a channel that belongs almost entirely to large firms: 27.1% of enterprises with 250 employees or more use it, against 3.3% of those with 10 to 49. Again, enterprises with at least 10 employees and 2024 sales: the enterprise figures are Istat’s, the turnover figure comes from Eurostat, which publishes the same survey.

And Tuscany? The 2026 report by the Region’s statistics office, which reworks the same survey, says that Tuscan enterprises with at least 10 employees sell online about as much as the national average, in fact slightly more via the web (18.7% against 17.6%). But they sell more to consumers (89.9% against 86.7% of web sellers) and less to other businesses (64.4% against 68.5%), they lean more on intermediaries’ sites, the marketplaces, and on the automatic channel they lag behind: 2.9% against 4.6%. These are estimates from a regional sample that swing a fair amount from one year to the next, so they should be read as a snapshot, not a trend. The snapshot, though, is sharp: a business community that has learned to sell online to the public, and that still uses the old tools with its professional customers. B2B e-commerce in Tuscany, in other words, is still largely to be built. Here we look at the specific case of companies selling to other companies.

A professional customer does not buy like a consumer

The reason a reseller keeps writing emails even when the website exists is simple: the website was not built for them. An online shop designed for the public shows the same price to everyone, asks for a credit card and treats every purchase as if it were the first.

People who buy for work need something else. They have their own price list, often different from the customer next door, with volume discounts and minimum quantities. They pay on terms, not by card. They almost always reorder the same things, and would like to do it in a minute starting from the previous order. They want to know whether the goods are in stock before committing to their own customer. And they are often not a single person: someone prepares the order and someone else approves it.

If the website offers none of this, email is the rational choice. And here another figure weighs in, again from Eurostat for enterprises with at least 10 employees: among Italian companies that sell via the web, those doing so through their own website or app are 73%, against 86% on average across the twenty-seven EU countries, while reliance on marketplaces is far higher than elsewhere (65% against 45%). Marketplaces are excellent for being found by people who do not know you. But customer-specific price lists, reserved terms and quick reordering can only be built on a channel that is yours.

Five signs the threshold has been crossed

No statistic measures how many orders arrive by email or phone, or what re-keying them costs: Istat does not collect it, and we found no other primary source that does. What follows comes from what we see in companies, and anyone can check it against their own.

• Orders are re-keyed by hand. They arrive in one format and have to be entered in another. It is work that already exists and that nobody has ever called a cost.
• Code and price errors have become normal. A PDF price list is out of date the day after it is sent, and the customer orders from the old one.
• The phone rings to ask whether goods are in stock. Every availability call is information the management system already holds and the customer cannot see.
• The sales rep works as a keyboard. The person who should be selling spends their days transcribing orders from customers they already have.
• Foreign customers order when the office is closed. And they wait for the Italian morning for a confirmation a system would give at once.

One of these signs alone does not justify a project. Three or four together say that the cost of the current way has overtaken the cost of changing it.

The answer is not always an e-commerce site

This is the part we care about most. Once the threshold is crossed there are at least three roads, and the most visible one is not always the right one.

A reserved area for resellers. The customer logs in with their credentials, sees their own price list and terms, and reorders from their history. No public cart, no prices on display. This is the case of one of our clients, ITProducts, a wholesale distributor of phone and IT accessories: catalogue and prices appear only to registered users, and only businesses can buy, not private individuals. A project like this is often closer to custom software development than to an online shop, and it is also the case where the investment tends to pay back sooner, because it replaces work that already exists.

Connect the management system first, everything else after. If products, prices and stock levels are not aligned automatically, any storefront, public or reserved, will sooner or later show sold-out items and superseded prices. Sometimes the first step is not even visible from outside.

Leave the catalogue as it is. If customers are few, orders are complex and every supply is negotiated, a catalogue with a request-for-quote form is already the right tool. Turning it into a cart would mean spending money to remove a conversation that is actually needed.

What we do on this front, from the online shop to the ordering portal, is described on our Websites and e-commerce page, in the section on B2B e-commerce.

A question that comes with the portal: who holds the keys

A reserved area means credentials: one for each reseller, often more than one per company. It means people who change jobs and access that stays active, passwords shared among colleagues, a reserved price list that is worth something even to those who should not see it. That is no reason not to do it. It is something to decide up front, together with the rest: who creates access, who removes it, and how you notice when something is off. It is the same question we ask when we work on a company’s cyber security, and we will come back to it in more detail.

Our view

When a company asks us for B2B e-commerce, we do not start from the platform. We ask to see how an order arrives today, from the moment the customer decides to buy to the moment the goods leave: who writes it, who reads it, who re-keys it, where the mistakes happen. Almost always that path says on its own which of the three roads makes sense, and sometimes it says that nothing needs changing.

If you recognise three or four of the signs above, get in touch: we will look together at how your orders arrive today, with no obligation, and tell you where a portal would save work and where it would not.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between B2B e-commerce and a normal online shop?

An online shop for the public shows the same price to everyone and takes payment at the time of purchase. B2B e-commerce is built for customers that are companies: price lists and discounts that differ by customer, minimum quantities, payment on terms, quick reordering from history, several users for the same company. Catalogue and prices are often visible only after registration.

When is it worth moving from email orders to a reseller portal?

When the manual work around orders has become a steady cost: orders re-keyed into the management system, frequent code or price errors, phone calls to check availability, sales reps transcribing instead of selling, foreign customers waiting for the office to open. One of these signs alone is not enough; several together are.

Do you need an e-commerce site to sell to other companies?

No. Sometimes a reserved area where the reseller sees their own price list and reorders is enough. Sometimes the first step is connecting the catalogue to the management system, so that prices and stock are aligned. And when customers are few and every supply is negotiated, a catalogue with a request-for-quote form is already the right tool.

What is EDI and does it concern small companies too?

It is the way the buyer’s system and the seller’s system pass orders and documents to each other on their own, in a format the two have agreed on, with nobody typing anything. According to Istat, among Italian enterprises with at least 10 employees 4.6% use it to sell: 27.1% of those with 250 employees or more, 3.3% of those with 10 to 49 (2025 survey, 2024 sales). For a small company it usually comes into play when a large customer asks for it. An ordering portal solves a different problem: giving a tool to customers who do not have a system of their own.