WebSphere Commerce Enterprise

Partner groups and partner sites

When operating a B2B indirect store, we work with various business partners (such as resellers, distributors, suppliers and so on). We may also work with the partner groups and sites for these business partners.

Use the Organization Administration Console to manage partner groups and Web sites.

A partner group is a designation for business partners, which assigns them a set of entitlements and privileges. For example, a manufacturer may assign resellers a designation of Gold, Silver, or Bronze, based on their success in selling the product line, or their volume of sales.

A partner site is a Web site operated by a business partner. If your site is integrated with other partner sites (for instance, the partners provide real-time quotes or order status update information), then your site customers may want to simplify the flow of accessing these integrated partner sites by maintaining authentication and profile information about partner sites on your site. For example, a customer organization may maintain its user ID information that identifies the customer organization to the partner site.