What is Enterprise Commerce? Custom Solution or Ready-Made?

Finding the right e-commerce platform is the first step offline commerce businesses take when they decide to go digital. While small and medium-sized businesses have little difficulty in choosing an e-commerce platform, for large companies, it may become a real challenge. Large-scale businesses require enterprise-level systems that can handle their heavy workload, provide enough functionality to support most of the business activities, and integrate with other systems. Therefore, many enterprises opt for developing custom enterprise commerce solutions.

In this article, we’ll look into what enterprise commerce is in general, which business solutions companies can expect from ready-made enterprise commerce platforms, and what to consider if creating a custom enterprise commerce solution.

What is Enterprise Commerce?

The term enterprise commerce is rather self-explanatory. It involves a large, enterprise-level business that offers its services or products to individual buyers as well as to other businesses (B2B and B2C).

For effective commerce, the best enterprise businesses usually use enterprise commerce platforms. These platforms are much more robust, offer a wider range of tools, and can handle heavier workloads than most e-commerce platforms used by small and medium-sized businesses. They help large businesses:

• perform the most essential business tasks on one platform, e.g. inventory management, customer management, product shipping, catalog management, and others;
• handle multiple selling channels;
• provide multi-store support;
• optimize eCommerce websites to desktop and mobile views;
• effectively manage complex workflow;
• perform advanced data analysis;
• carry out payments in various methods using several global currencies;
• implement the latest digital technologies for efficient business expansion and revenue growth, e.g., blockchain, Big Data analytics, AI technology, and others.

Although enterprise commerce platforms are created for large businesses with a global presence and multi-million dollar revenues, smaller companies can also integrate them into their digital ecosystem. Thus, SMEs with a long-term vision for their business advancement and who want to grow together with their e-commerce platforms turn to enterprise commerce development and build their own digital solutions.

What Are the Types of Enterprise Commerce?

Enterprise commerce can take different forms depending on who the company interacts with and how it organizes its digital and offline channels. Understanding these models helps enterprises better define their platform requirements and select a solution that can effectively support all business processes. Below are the main types of enterprise commerce.

B2B Enterprise Commerce

B2B enterprise commerce focuses on serving corporate clients, distributors, partners, and intermediaries. Such systems typically include complex pricing logic, personalized catalogs, volume order management, procurement automation, and multi-level access rights. For large organizations, the B2B model requires a highly flexible platform capable of supporting unique workflows and integrating with ERP, PIM, CRM, and other internal systems.

B2C Enterprise Commerce

In the B2C model, a company sells products or services directly to end customers. At the enterprise level, this model is characterized by scale, high traffic, the need for personalization, and continuous optimization of the customer journey. The platform must provide stable performance during peak loads, support multiple channels, include marketing tools, recommendation engines, and convenient assortment management.

B2B2C

The B2B2C model combines interaction with other businesses and direct communication with the end consumer. For example, a manufacturer may sell products through partners while also maintaining its own direct channel to the customer. This approach requires a flexible architecture capable of supporting different sales scenarios within one system, ensuring supply chain transparency, and maintaining a consistent brand experience for all participants.

Marketplace Commerce

The marketplace model assumes that a company provides a platform for multiple sellers and manages product listings, transactions, logistics, and other operations. At the enterprise level, advanced moderation tools, automation capabilities, scalability, and flexible commission and catalog management are essential. Such solutions require high performance and flexibility to support a growing number of sellers and SKUs.

Omnichannel Enterprise Commerce

Omnichannel commerce combines online and offline channels, including websites, mobile apps, physical stores, marketplaces, social media, and other touchpoints. Enterprise companies use this model to deliver a seamless and consistent customer experience, regardless of where the interaction begins or ends. Platforms supporting omnichannel commerce must synchronize data on orders, inventory, customers, and interactions in real time, ensuring uninterrupted operations across all channels.

Enterprise Commerce vs E-commerce. Key Differences

Although both e-commerce and enterprise commerce relate to online sales, their goals, scale, and technical requirements differ significantly. Small and medium-sized businesses can successfully operate on standard e-commerce platforms, but for large organizations with high workloads, complex workflows, and an extensive digital ecosystem, this approach is often insufficient.

Integrations

E-commerce platforms usually provide basic or limited integration options. Enterprise commerce, on the other hand, must seamlessly connect with ERP, CRM, PIM, WMS, PLM, BI, and other core enterprise systems. Proper integrations enable smooth data exchange across departments, partners, stores, and external services.

Architecture

E-commerce platforms often rely on monolithic architecture with limited customization options. Enterprise commerce, however, is built on more flexible architectural approaches — microservices, headless, API-first. This allows companies to adapt the platform to existing workflows, significantly expand functionality, and introduce new digital services without disrupting operations.

Scalability

Traditional e-commerce solutions work well as long as the business stays within certain limits — moderate traffic, a predictable number of products, and standard workflows. But as the company grows, these systems often start to struggle. Unlike consumer-oriented platforms, enterprise-grade solutions are built to handle far greater demands. They can support high traffic levels and manage thousands — or even millions — of SKUs while maintaining reliable performance under heavy load. These systems also make it easier for your business to expand into new regions without compromising the stability or quality of the customer experience.

Functionality

Standard e-commerce platforms cover only the basics: managing products, processing orders, handling the cart, and accepting payments.

Enterprise e-commerce offers much more than the basics. With built-in personalization, advanced content tools, multi-store and multi-language support, flexible pricing, and comprehensive analytics, it enables businesses to manage all sales channels from a single, unified platform.

These features support large companies operating across multiple regions, segments, and customer touchpoints.

Data Management

At the enterprise level, data becomes a critical asset. Standard e-commerce platforms are not always capable of processing large data volumes or complex data structures. Enterprise commerce solutions address this by offering centralized data storage, advanced analytics, ML/AI-driven automation, and full transparency across the organization. This becomes especially important for companies that operate in both B2B and B2C segments or manage large and constantly changing product portfolios.

Cost of Ownership and Support

Although entry costs for standard e-commerce platforms are lower, long-term ownership can become more expensive. As the business grows, companies often need workarounds, system overrides, and custom integrations, which make the solution more complex and costly to maintain. Enterprise commerce, by contrast, is designed for long-term scalability and provides built-in tools that support business growth without relying on temporary patches.

About Enterprise Commerce Solutions

There is a wide range of solutions that can be embedded into enterprise commerce platforms. Let’s have a closer look at them and find out when enterprise businesses may need them.

• Product Information Management (PIM) –  the enterprise software used by many eCommerce companies for efficient product information management across diverse selling and communication with customers channels. Apart from organizing data into convenient catalogs for customers, it also allows companies to keep their product database updated across company departments, supply chain partners, and others.
• Business Process Management (BPM) – a useful tool focused on long-term analysis of diverse activities and tasks within a company, making them consistent and simple to manage. Using a BPM tool, companies can create, deploy, group, analyze, automate and improve their business processes from employee onboarding to account management to invoicing to project management, and others.
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) – the software used for alleviating daily business activities in a company. A decent ERP system handles various business processes, including accounting, procurement, HR, project management, risk management and compliance, supply chain management, and many others and allows data storage and processing within one database.

• Human Resource Management (HRM) – a convenient tool for the human resource department utilized for employee management. Using this tool, HR managers can efficiently hire and onboard staff, provide employees with training and monitor their performance, handle incentives, benefits, welfare, health, and other programs, and much more.
• Product Data Management (PDM) – a tool responsible for the management and publication of product-related data widely used in engineering, manufacturing, construction, and others. It allows tracking product versions, handing a bill of materials (BOM), creating instructions, handling engineering data and designs in CAD tools, monitoring engineering processes, and much more.
• Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) – the software that helps track an entire journey of a product from its construction to providing it as a service to its disposal. PLM tools unite business processes, organizational data, external systems, product design, manufacturing, maintenance, deployment, and other processes on one platform, increasing data transparency between departments as well as third parties involved.
• Supply Chain Software (SCM) – this tool is about optimization and successful product delivery. Using SCM systems companies can improve their product handling processes,  retrace the cheapest and safest routes for product delivery, increase data transparency across supply chain participants, enhance their customer satisfaction by providing convenient product ordering and delivery services, and much more.
• Business Intelligence (BI) – BI represents a suite of tools and technologies that gather, analyze, and visualize raw data from various sources. Companies can use this processed and refined data for further business insights, e.g. defining and improving unprofitable activities, preventing losses, assessing staff performance, minimizing business risks, and much more.

Benefits of Custom Enterprise Commerce Development

When businesses switch from using a variety of separated business solutions to integrated enterprise commerce platforms, they gain numerous benefits:

• Enhanced customer experience when the goods and services are delivered smoothly and without any delays;
• Operational efficiency due to the elimination of data silos between the company’s departments, sales and communication channels, as well as the increase in working efficiency when diverse business operations are fulfilled within a single ecosystem;
• Advanced analytics as modern enterprise commerce solutions have AI and ML-driven instruments that can help analyze large amounts of raw data gathered inside the company and from external sources;
• Omni-channel communication between brick-and-mortar and digital stores with seamless operations, convenient transactions, and better customer satisfaction.

However, all these advantages can be overshadowed by inconvenient or insufficient functionality that businesses may find in off-the-shelf solutions. The fact is that each enterprise company is unique and has its own established, often complex processes. Therefore, they require the enterprise commerce platforms to be carefully adjusted to their business needs. This can be achieved with custom enterprise solutions.

When companies turn to custom enterprise commerce development, they get scalable enterprise platforms built in line with their business processes and requirements. Moreover, they obtain better-protected solutions as they don’t have to depend on third-party vendors, entrusting them with the most sensitive company data.

Custom vs Off-The-Shelf Enterprise Commerce: Side-by-Side Comparison

Choosing between an off-the-shelf platform and a custom enterprise commerce solution directly affects the system’s flexibility, scalability, and long-term costs. The comparison below helps enterprises evaluate both approaches objectively.

Custom vs Off-The-Shelf Enterprise Commerce

Signs Your Business Needs an Enterprise Commerce Platform

It is not always obvious when a standard e-commerce system can no longer support a growing enterprise. However, there are several clear indicators that suggest it may be time to transition to a more powerful and flexible enterprise commerce platform. Below are the most common signs.

Complex Supply Chains and Logistics Processes

If a company manages multiple warehouses, works with different suppliers, handles large product volumes, or operates internationally, traditional e-commerce systems often lack the necessary flexibility. An enterprise commerce platform provides full supply chain visibility, automates key operations, and synchronizes data across all participants.

A Large Number of Stores and Sales Channels

When sales occur through a website, mobile app, marketplaces, offline stores, or partner channels, businesses need a unified system that consolidates all operations. Enterprise commerce platforms allow central management of product data, pricing, orders, and customer information across every channel.

A Wide Product Assortment and a High Volume of SKUs

As the number of products grows into thousands or tens of thousands, standard e-commerce solutions struggle to maintain efficient catalog management, fast search, and stable performance. Enterprise platforms are optimized for large catalogs and offer automation tools, segmentation capabilities, and flexible product information management.

High Requirements for Personalization and Customer Experience

Companies aiming to deliver personalized recommendations, dynamic pricing, tailored promotions, and advanced customer journeys need systems capable of processing large datasets and reacting in real time. Enterprise commerce platforms include AI/ML-driven personalization engines designed for this level of complexity.

Performance Issues With The Current Website

Slow page loading, checkout errors, or instability during peak traffic indicate that the current platform is no longer meeting business demands. Enterprise solutions are built to ensure consistent performance and reliability under heavy load.

Fragmented Internal Systems and Integration Challenges

Many enterprises rely on ERP, CRM, PIM, WMS, financial software, and analytics tools. If these systems operate in isolation or require manual data transfers, the business faces delays, inefficiencies, and data inconsistencies. Enterprise commerce platforms enable seamless integrations and a unified data flow across all departments.

Plans for Scaling and Entering New Markets

Businesses expanding their product lines, launching new brands, or entering additional countries need platforms that support multi-language, multi-currency, complex tax rules, and multi-store capabilities. Enterprise commerce provides the flexibility required for strategic growth.

Tip on How to Choose an Enterprise Commerce Provider

When building proprietary enterprise commerce platforms, several things should be taken into account:

What are their major business objectives for re-platforming? 

This can be establishing a more user-friendly UI for customers, reducing expenses, increasing ROI, real-time data analysis, multi-store management, etc.

What are the current app and software bottlenecks that they want to avoid on a new platform?

This can include updating the legacy system of the current platform or software, difficulties in software integration, security issues, etc.

What are the critical features they want to include in their new platform?

A new platform can include any enterprise commerce platform functionality from conventional ERPs to more industry-specific such as PDM or BI. Moreover, a company may need some special solutions, e.g. blockchain-level security, certain catalog requirements, and others, that can also be successfully integrated into a custom solution.

What integrations does the company want to include in its solution?

In case a company isn’t ready to migrate their existing systems, e.g. CRM base or CSM, they can always add them to the new platform as an integrated solution via APIs. Therefore, businesses should carefully consider what they expect from their new platform and how they can connect it to already functioning infrastructure.

Enterprise Commerce Trends

Digital commerce continues to evolve rapidly, and enterprises need to stay aware of emerging technologies to remain competitive and build sustainable business models. Below are the key trends shaping the future of enterprise commerce and influencing platform requirements today.

AI-driven Personalization

Artificial intelligence is becoming a core component of modern commerce systems. Platforms increasingly use AI and ML to analyze customer behavior, forecast demand, deliver personalized recommendations, and optimize product assortments. This helps companies improve conversion rates, enhance customer experience, and build long-term relationships with their audiences.

Headless Commerce Adoption

Headless architecture is gradually becoming the standard for large enterprises. It separates the frontend from the backend, allowing businesses to create tailored user interfaces for different channels — websites, mobile apps, IoT devices, or in-store digital kiosks. Companies adopt headless commerce when they need more flexibility, faster innovation cycles, and the ability to deliver unique experiences across multiple touchpoints.

Omnichannel Maturity

Enterprises increasingly aim to provide a consistent and seamless experience across all channels: online, offline, in mobile apps, or through marketplaces. Modern platforms support this trend by enabling unified data management, synchronized inventory, transparent order tracking, and smooth customer journeys across every interaction point. Omnichannel maturity is becoming a major competitive advantage.

Composable Commerce

Many companies are moving away from monolithic platforms toward composable architectures, assembling their commerce ecosystems from modular components that match their current business needs. This approach simplifies scaling, speeds up integration of new services, and reduces time-to-market for innovations. Composable commerce enables gradual modernization without the need to rebuild the entire system at once.

Blockchain for Supply Chain Transparency

Blockchain is gaining traction as a tool for improving supply chain visibility, verifying product authenticity, managing documentation, and enhancing trust between partners. For enterprises operating internationally or managing complex logistics networks, blockchain provides a higher level of data transparency and security.

Sustainability & Green Operations

Sustainability and environmental responsibility are becoming essential parts of corporate strategy. Enterprise commerce platforms support this shift by offering tools for optimizing resource usage, reducing carbon footprint, minimizing waste, and improving logistics efficiency. Transparent production and delivery data help companies meet ESG standards and rising customer expectations.

Bottom Line

Having a solid enterprise commerce platform that allows quick data exchange, offers the needed functionality and ensures strong security is a key to successful business development. That’s why many companies opt for using integrated enterprise commerce solutions instead of using standalone software for effective business management.

However, those businesses that consider using off-the-shelf enterprise commerce platforms may run into some issues like their cumbersome nature, inflexibility, absence of the essential features, and a number of the never-used ones. To avoid this problem, many companies build custom enterprise commerce software solutions.

If you’re also considering building a custom enterprise commerce solution, our software development team with 20+ years of experience in the global software development market and over 700 successfully completed projects, including software development for enterprises, can be of help to you.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is enterprise commerce?

Enterprise commerce refers to large-scale digital commerce operations that support complex workflows, high traffic volumes, multi-channel sales, and deep integrations with internal business systems such as ERP, CRM, PIM, or supply chain tools. Enterprise commerce platforms are designed for companies that require robust performance, advanced customization, and centralized data management.

What is the difference between enterprise commerce and traditional e-commerce?

Traditional e-commerce platforms are built for small and medium-sized businesses with standard workflows and limited product catalogs. Enterprise commerce platforms, on the other hand, support high scalability, flexible architecture, advanced personalization, multi-store and multi-language capabilities, and extensive integrations. They are intended for organizations with complex operations and higher performance requirements.

What size of business needs enterprise commerce?

Enterprise commerce is typically needed by mid-sized and large organizations that have multiple sales channels, large product catalogs, international operations, high traffic volumes, or unique business processes that cannot be supported by standard e-commerce systems. Businesses planning rapid growth or digital transformation also benefit from enterprise-level solutions.

What are the types of enterprise commerce platforms?

The most common types include B2B enterprise commerce, B2C enterprise commerce, B2B2C models, marketplace platforms, and omnichannel commerce solutions. Each type supports a different set of customer interactions, sales channels, and operational requirements.

Custom vs off-the-shelf: how to choose?

Off-the-shelf platforms are suitable for companies that need fast implementation and standard functionality. Custom solutions are a better fit for businesses with complex workflows, strict security requirements, and high scalability needs. The choice depends on budget, timeline, existing infrastructure, and long-term growth plans.

What features are essential?

Key features of a BigCommerce enterprise platform include:

• Multi-store, multi-language, and multi-currency support
• Advanced product and catalog management
• AI-driven personalization
• API-first architecture with flexible integrations
• Centralized data management
• Order and inventory synchronization across all channels
• Advanced analytics and reporting
• Strong security and compliance tools