B2B commerce glossary

B2B commerce carries a lot of vocabulary, much of it acronyms everyone in the room assumes you already know. This is the working list: the terms that come up in a real project, defined in plain language, with a link onward where the subject has an article of its own.

A

API — Application programming interface. The contract that lets one system call another. Every integration you build — ERP, PIM, CRM, marketplace — goes through one.

API key — The credential a system uses to call that API, scoped to exactly what it may do and revocable on its own. Issued in Settings, never emailed around. See Create an API key.

Approval chain — Several approvers in sequence — team lead, then department head, then purchasing — each of whom must agree before the order exists. See Approval models.

Approval workflow — A rule that routes an order to someone else before it becomes an order — over a value, from a particular person, for a particular product group. See Approval rules.

Article number — See SKU.

Assortment — The set of articles a particular customer may see and buy. In B2B it is rarely the whole catalog: framework agreements, competition and compliance all narrow it per customer.

Asset — A managed image, datasheet, drawing or video, stored as a record with its own metadata rather than as a file loosely attached to a product. See Assets.

Attribute — One field a product can have: thread_size, material, pressure_rating. In B2B the attributes are the product — they are how it is found, filtered and chosen. See Attributes.

Außendienst — Field sales. The people who visit customers. E-commerce works best when it takes the routine reorders off them so they can spend time on the business that needs a person.

Automation — Replacing a manual step with a rule. In B2B the win is usually in order intake, where staff currently retype what a customer phoned in.

B

B2B — Business-to-business. Trade between companies. The buyer is an employee spending their employer's money under their employer's rules.

B2C — Business-to-consumer. Trade between a company and a private individual. Almost every assumption a B2C shop makes about price, identity and payment is wrong in B2B. See B2B commerce basics.

BMEcat — The German standard for exchanging product catalog data between companies, as structured XML. Large customers and procurement platforms ask for BMEcat files the way others ask for a spreadsheet. See Catalog exchange formats.

BOM — Bill of material: the structured list of parts an assembly or machine is built from, with position numbers and quantities. The backbone of selling spare parts. See Bills of material.

Budget — A spending ceiling for a cost centre over a period, either advisory or enforced at checkout. Its ledger shows reserved, committed, spent and remaining. See Budgets.

Bulk upload — Loading many records at once from a file instead of creating them one by one. The only realistic way to fill a B2B catalog. See Import products in bulk.

Bundle — Several articles sold together at one price — the machine with its start-up consumables, the tool with its bits. A promotion mechanism, not a product. See Bundles and kits.

Buyer — The person at your customer who places orders in your storefront. Distinct from a Cockpit user, who works for you.

C

Call-off — An order placed against the committed volume of a framework agreement rather than at normal conditions. The buyer is spending a commitment, not negotiating. See Call-offs.

Cart — The basket a buyer fills before checkout. In B2B a cart is often built over days, shared with a colleague, or sent for approval rather than paid.

Category — A node in the tree buyers browse. Related to but not the same as a family: a category is navigation, a family is structure. See Categories.

Channel — One outlet the catalog is published to — a storefront, a punchout catalog, an export. The same product can carry different values per channel. See Channels, locales and completeness.

Checkout — The steps between a full cart and a placed order. In B2B it collects a cost centre, a delivery date, a purchase order number and a delivery address far more often than it collects card details. See Checkout.

CMS — Content management system. The layer that stores and edits editorial content — landing pages, category texts, campaign pages — as opposed to product data, which belongs in the PIM.

Cockpit — The revenexx admin interface at app.revenexx.com, where you maintain products, prices, customers and orders. Your buyers never see it. See the Cockpit tour.

Completeness — A calculated score saying how much of a product's required data is actually filled in, per channel and language. It is the difference between "we imported 40,000 articles" and "40,000 articles are publishable". See Completeness.

Configurator — A tool that walks a buyer through valid options — length, material, connection, coating — until a specification, a price and an orderable line exist. See Configurable products.

Constraint rule — A rule inside a configurator that forbids or forces a combination: this coating not with that seal, this flange always with that gasket. See Build a configurator.

Consumption rate — How fast a customer uses an article, derived from their own order history. The input behind reorder points and reorder suggestions. See How smart reordering works.

Contract price — A price agreed individually with one customer, usually in a framework agreement, that overrides every other layer for that customer. See Contract prices.

Cost centre — The internal account an order line is booked against at your customer. If your shop cannot capture one, your customer's controller has to reconstruct it from your invoice. See Cost centres and Cost centre master data.

Coupon — A code that triggers a promotion when it is entered — single-use, bulk-generated for a mailing, or assigned to a sales rep to hand out. See Coupons and codes.

Credit limit — The maximum a customer may owe you at one time. An order that would exceed it is a commercial decision, not a technical error, and the ERP is usually the system that knows the current figure.

CRM — Customer relationship management. The system holding contacts, activities and opportunities. Often the source of customer master data flowing into commerce.

Cross-selling — Offering related articles alongside the one being bought. In B2B this is less "customers also bought" and more "this fitting needs this seal" — compatibility relationships, which are catalog data.

CSV — A plain text table of comma-separated values. The lowest common denominator for imports and exports, and the format most supplier data arrives in.

Curation — Deliberately fixing the order of results for a search term — pinning, boosting, burying — instead of leaving it to relevance alone. See Merchandising and boosting.

cXML — Commerce XML, the protocol behind punchout in Ariba, Coupa and similar systems: it carries the roundtrip that hands a cart from your shop back into the customer's procurement system. See Punchout explained.

D

Data model — The structure your product data is forced into: which attributes exist, which family requires which of them, what is a variant. The one decision that is genuinely expensive to change later. See The catalog data model.

Datanorm — An older German exchange format for article and price data, still the standard between wholesalers and the trades. See Catalog exchange formats.

Deputy — A stand-in approver who takes over while the usual one is away. Not having one is the single most common reason an order sits for a fortnight. See Approvals that get stuck.

Discount authority — How much a salesperson may take off a quote without asking anyone. Configured as a threshold above which the quote itself needs approval. See Quote settings.

DSGVO — The German name for the EU General Data Protection Regulation. Drives where data may be stored, how long it is kept, and what a buyer may ask you to delete.

Dynamic pricing — Prices that vary by conditions rather than being fixed per article. In B2B the conditions are customer, quantity, contract and market — not demand and time of day. See Price models in B2B.

E

EAN / GTIN — The globally unique barcode number of a trade item. Useful as a second identifier alongside your own article number, and often required by marketplaces.

eCl@ss — The dominant product classification standard in German industry: a four-level numeric class per article, plus a defined list of features to fill. Large customers require it. See Classification standards.

E-commerce — Selling over the internet. In B2B it rarely means a new sales channel; it usually means moving existing customers off the phone.

ERP — Enterprise resource planning: the system that runs stock, invoicing, credit and accounting, typically SAP or Microsoft Dynamics. Commerce sits in front of it, never replaces it. See Deciding your system of record.

Escalation — What happens when an approval is not decided in time: a reminder, a hand-over to a deputy, or a step up to the next level. See Approvals that get stuck.

ETIM — The classification standard for technical and electrical products, used across Elektrogroßhandel and the installation trades. It runs alongside eCl@ss rather than replacing it. See Classification standards.

Event — A signal the platform emits when something happens — an order was placed, a product changed — that other systems can react to. See Events and webhooks.

Exploded drawing — The technical drawing of an assembly with numbered positions, made clickable so a buyer can pick the part they can see but cannot name. See Exploded drawings and hotspots.

F

Facet — A filter built from structured attributes — thread size, material, pressure rating — that lets a buyer cut thousands of hits down to five. Only as good as the data behind it. See Facets and filters.

Family — The template that decides which attributes a kind of product has and which of them are mandatory. Hydraulic hoses have a family; so do bearings. See Families.

Fast product entry — A storefront feature that lets a buyer fill a cart by typing article numbers, without opening a single product page. For buyers who already know what they want, it removes most of the ordering process.

Field mapping — Deciding which field in your ERP corresponds to which field here, and in which direction it flows. Most integration problems are mapping problems. See Field mapping.

Framework agreement — A negotiated contract fixing conditions with one customer for a period — prices, volumes, terms. The commercial reality behind contract prices, and what call-offs are placed against. See Set up a framework agreement.

G

Guided selling — Leading a buyer to the right article by asking about their requirement rather than expecting them to navigate a catalog. Works only if the technical attributes behind it are structured.

H

Headless commerce — Separating the storefront from the commerce backend so they communicate only over an API. Buys freedom in how the shop looks and where it runs, at the cost of building and maintaining that frontend.

Hotspot — One clickable region on an exploded drawing, tied to a position number and through it to an orderable article. See Exploded drawings and hotspots.

I

Idempotency — The property that sending the same API request twice has the same effect as sending it once. What stops a retried call becoming two orders. See Common API problems.

Index — The prepared, searchable copy of your catalog. A product missing from the index does not exist for search, however correct its record is. See Configure the index.

Innendienst — Internal sales support. The people who take orders by phone, check availability and know the customers. Your shop's real competitor and, done right, its biggest beneficiary.

Installed base — The machines a customer actually owns, registered with type and serial number, so their spare parts can be shown without anyone searching. See The customer's installed base.

Integration pattern — How two systems exchange data: batch on a schedule, real-time on demand, or a hybrid of both. Stock is usually real-time, product data is usually batch. See Integration patterns.

J

JSON — A text format for structured data, used by most modern APIs. The lighter-weight alternative to XML.

K

Kit — A fixed set of articles sold and picked as one line — a maintenance kit, a start-up set. Unlike a bundle promotion, a kit is normally an article in its own right. See Bundles and kits.

L

Locale — A language-and-region combination such as de-AT. Product values can differ per locale, which is not the same as differing per market.

Long tail — The large share of your catalog that sells rarely but must still be findable. It is why B2B catalogs run to tens of thousands of articles and why per-product manual work does not scale.

M

Market — A distinct business context inside your tenant: a country, a region, a second brand. Carries its own currencies, locales and tax treatment on a shared catalog. See Languages and markets.

Marketplace (B2B) — A third-party platform where many suppliers sell, such as Amazon Business. Suits cheap, ad-hoc purchases; poorly suited to negotiated, specification-heavy business.

Measurement family — A group of units that convert into each other: millimetres and inches, bar and psi. Storing 10 as a number with "mm" written somewhere else is how conversion bugs happen. See Measurements and units.

Middleware — The layer that sits between commerce and your other systems and does the translating. In this platform that role is filled by Integration Studio.

Mittelstand — German mid-market companies — manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers. Owner-managed, often specialists in a narrow field, and the audience this platform is built for.

Multichannel — Selling through several routes at once — field sales, dealers, phone, shop, marketplaces. In the Mittelstand the point of a shop is to strengthen the existing channels, not to replace them.

Multi-tenancy — One platform serving many customer companies with their data strictly separated. Your tenant is your boundary. See Tenants, apps and packages.

N

Number range — The rule that generates order, quote and invoice numbers. Worth agreeing with accounting before the first order, not after. See Number ranges.

O

OCI — Open Catalog Interface, SAP's punchout standard and the most common one in German industry. Hands a cart back to the customer's system as form fields. See Punchout explained.

Order list — A saved list of articles a buyer reorders — a maintenance kit, a monthly consumables list. One of the features B2B buyers judge a shop on.

Organisation — The customer company record: terms, addresses, credit, and the contacts inside it. In B2B the organisation is the customer, not the person. See Organizations.

P

Payment method — How an order is paid. In B2B, payment on account dominates; cards are rare and sometimes unwanted. See Payment methods.

Payment terms — When an invoice is due and on what conditions — 30 days net, 14 days with 2% Skonto. A property of the customer, not of the order. See Payment terms.

PIM — Product information management: the layer where product data from every source is collected, structured, enriched and published to every channel. See How PIM works.

Price list — The container prices live in. A product appears in several at once — standard, segment, contract — and the layers resolve to one number for one buyer. See Price lists.

Procurement integration — Plugging your catalog and order intake into the purchasing systems and processes your customers already run, so buying from you fits their workflow rather than interrupting it. Punchout is the usual technique.

Product catalog — The structured, published set of your articles. For many Mittelstand companies the digital catalog is the first project, before any transaction. See Publish a digital product catalog.

Product configurator — See Configurator.

Product datasheet — The technical document a buyer downloads and forwards. In B2B it is often the deciding content, so it belongs in the catalog as a managed asset rather than on a shared drive.

PSP — Payment service provider. The company supplying the payment methods your checkout offers, usually billed per transaction.

Punchout — The mechanism that lets a buyer reach your shop from inside their own procurement system, already authenticated, with their prices and assortment, and hand the finished cart back for approval. See Punchout explained.

Purchase request — A buyer's proposed order, waiting for approval. It reserves no stock and invoices nothing until it is approved and becomes an order. See Purchase requests vs. orders.

Q

Quick order — Filling a cart by entering or uploading a list of article numbers and quantities. The fastest path for a buyer working from a parts list.

Quote — A priced offer that becomes an order when the customer accepts it. The normal starting point for configured products, project business and unusual quantities. See Quotes and negotiation and The quote lifecycle.

Quote validity — The date a quote expires. Past it the frozen prices no longer apply, which is the only thing standing between you and an offer accepted eight months later. See The quote lifecycle.

R

Rate limit — The cap on how many API calls one key may make in a period. Passing it returns HTTP 429, which is a design problem in the integration rather than an outage. See Rate limits and quotas.

Reference entity — A record type for things that repeat across products — manufacturers, materials, certificates — so they are managed once rather than retyped per product. See Reference entities.

Reorder point — The stock level at the customer that should trigger the next order: consumption rate, plus lead time, plus safety stock. See Configure reorder suggestions.

Replenishment order — An order that repeats a previous one automatically on a schedule the customer sets, without going through checkout again. See Standing orders.

REST — The common style for modern web APIs, and the lighter alternative to SOAP. Most of what you connect to will speak it.

Returns — Sending goods back. In B2B a return is usually an authorised process with a reference number, not a no-questions-asked right. See Returns.

RFQ — Request for quote: a buyer asking you to price a specified requirement, usually in parallel with two or three of your competitors. See Request for quote in B2B.

Role — What a person may do. Applies twice over, to different populations: roles for your customers' buyers and roles for your own Cockpit users.

ROPO — Research online, purchase offline. The buyer researches on your site and then orders by phone. Common in B2B, and the reason a shop that never takes an order can still be earning its keep.

S

SaaS — Software as a service: the vendor runs the software, you use it over the web and pay per period. No servers, no upgrade projects.

Safety stock — The buffer a customer keeps so one late delivery does not stop production. It raises the reorder point, which is why suggestions fire earlier than pure consumption implies. See Configure reorder suggestions.

Sandbox — A separate tenant with its own data where an integrator can test, break things and start again without touching your live orders. See The sandbox.

SAP integration — Connecting to an SAP ERP, the most common backend in German industry. Covers article and price master data inbound, orders outbound, and often OCI punchout on top.

Scale price — A price that drops at quantity thresholds — 1, 10, 50, 250 pieces. The most common B2B pricing mechanism after the contract price. See Scale prices.

Scope — The specific permission attached to an API key — read orders, write stock. Give an integrator the scopes they need and no more. See Keys, scopes and tenants.

Search-to-order rate — The share of searches that end in an order. The one search metric that is about money rather than activity. See Search analytics.

Segment — A group of customer organisations treated alike for pricing, assortment or communication. The alternative to maintaining 400 things by hand. See Segments.

SEO — Search engine optimisation. Matters most for the anonymous part of the catalog: buyers search a part number long before they log in.

Shipping method — How goods reach the customer, with its carrier, service level and rates. B2B adds partial deliveries, delivery dates and freight thresholds. See Shipping.

Signature — A cryptographic header proving a webhook really came from the platform. Verify it, or anyone who learns your endpoint can post invented orders into your ERP. See Set up webhooks.

Skonto — A discount for paying early, quoted as "2% within 14 days, net 30". Standard in German B2B and part of payment terms.

SKU — Stock keeping unit: the article number that identifies one sellable item. Your buyers usually know it by heart, so search must find it exactly.

SOAP — An older, XML-based protocol for system-to-system calls. You still meet it in ERP interfaces that were built a while ago.

SSO — Single sign-on. One login across systems, federated with a company directory such as Active Directory. Means leavers lose access centrally. See Single sign-on.

Standing order — A fixed cart that ships on a fixed interval until someone pauses or ends it. The simplest form of recurring revenue, and the one to start with. See Standing orders.

Stock availability — What is actually on the shelf, shown to the buyer. Only useful if it is current, which usually means reading it from the ERP in real time rather than syncing it overnight.

Storefront — The public shop your buyers use: your domain, your branding, reading from the same data the Cockpit edits. You can run several on one catalog. See How storefronts work.

Studio — One of the six areas the Cockpit is divided into: Commerce, Experience, Integration, Analytics, AI and App. See Studios.

Subscription — A plan billed on a cycle — a service contract, a consumables plan — with its own terms, renewals, changes and cancellation rules. See Subscriptions.

Supersession — The chain that records that part 4711-A is replaced by 4711-B. Without it, a technician searching the old number finds nothing and reaches for the phone. See Maintain BOMs and drawings.

Synonym — A rule teaching search that your customers' word and your catalog's word mean the same thing: Dichtung and seal, Sechskantschraube and hex bolt. See Synonyms, stop words and rules.

System integration — Fitting a new system into the landscape that already exists, rather than beside it. In commerce that means PIM, ERP and CRM.

System of record — For any given field, the one system that owns it and is allowed to change it. Deciding this per field prevents two systems overwriting each other. See Deciding your system of record.

T

Tax class — The VAT treatment a product falls under. Set up before any price exists, because changing it afterwards touches every price. See Currencies and tax.

Technical wholesale — Technischer Großhandel: distributors of fasteners, fittings, tools, drives, electrical and industrial supplies. The largest B2B e-commerce segment in Germany, and the source of most of this vocabulary.

Tenant — Your company's isolated space on the platform, identified by a permanent slug such as max-mueller-gmbh. The boundary of all your data. See Tenants, apps and packages.

U

UNSPSC — A United Nations classification for products and services, used mainly by international corporates and public buyers. Coarser than eCl@ss, and often required alongside it. See Classification standards.

User experience (UX) — How it feels to use your shop. In B2B it is judged on whether the buyer can find the part number, see the right price and reorder in seconds — not on aesthetics.

V

Variant — One article in several sizes, colours or lengths, modelled as variations of one product rather than as unrelated records. See Variants.

Voucher — A code granting a discount. Less central in B2B than B2C, where conditions are negotiated rather than promoted, but useful for campaigns and first orders.

W

Webhook — An HTTP call the platform makes to another system when something happens, so that system does not have to keep asking. See Events and webhooks and Set up webhooks.

Wishlist — A buyer's saved list of articles they are considering. In B2B it usually turns into an order list rather than a gift.

Workflow — An automated sequence connecting systems: read a file, transform it, write it somewhere, handle the failure. See Build a workflow.

X

XLS / XLSX — Excel files. Whatever the integration architecture says, a large share of real B2B product and price data still travels this way.

XML — A structured text format for exchanging data. The basis of BMEcat, cXML and most older B2B interfaces.

Z

Zero-results — A search that returned nothing. Every one is a buyer who was about to spend money and could not, which makes it the most valuable weekly report in the shop. See Working the zero-results report.

Next

• B2B commerce basics — the concepts behind most of these terms, in context.
• How PIM works — the one subject worth understanding properly before anything else.