(Enterprise)

Organizational management roles

WebSphere Commerce supports the following organizational management roles: Buyer Administrator, Buyer Approver, Organization Participant, Buyer (buy-side), Procurement Buyer Administrator, Procurement Buyer (buy-side), Seller Administrator.

The following table describes each role and the business model each role applies to. Tip: The term buyer refers to a user who is created in a buyer organization and who has the Registered Customer role in the seller organization.

Role	Description	Business model
Buyer Administrator	The Buyer Administrator manages organizations and buyers for the buyer organization, which involves the following tasks: Creating and administering the suborganizations within the buyer organization. Creating buyers and assigning roles to buyers, such as the Buyer Approver role and the Organization Participant role. The Buyer Administrator can also assign the Buyer Administrator role to other users. (Enterprise) Buying on behalf of a buyer, for example, if the buyer goes on vacation or needs help.	B2B
Buyer Approver	The Buyer Approver approves orders that buyers place before the orders are submitted for purchase with the Seller.	B2B
Organization Participant	By default, buyers are entitled to shop under their parent organization. However, if a buyer must be entitled to contracts in other organizations, the buyer requires the Organization Participant role in the other organizations. See Organization Participant role.	B2B
Buyer (buy-side) (see note after this table)	The Buyer (buy-side) creates Requests for Quote (RFQs) for a specific variation of goods and services in the catalog. When the RFQ is approved, the Buyer (buy-side) can then place orders that contain the products and services covered in the RFQ.	B2B
Procurement Buyer Administrator	The Procurement Buyer Administrator registers users as Procurement Buyers. They create and administer the suborganizations within their buying organization and manage the various users including approving users as buyers. Registers users as Procurement Buyers. Accesses and executes procurement system integration related commands.	B2B
Procurement Buyer (buy-side)	The Procurement Buyer is an individual who belongs to a buyer organization which uses a procurement system to connect to WebSphere Commerce. Procurement Buyers are registered when a request comes from the procurement system. Procurement Buyers use the account belonging to their buyer organization to make purchases from the seller. After purchasing, the Procurement Buyer sends their order to the procurement system for approval.	B2B
Seller Administrator	The Seller Administrator manages the information for the selling organization. Seller administrators create and administer the organizations within the selling organization and the various users in the selling organization, including the assignment of the appropriate business roles.	B2B B2C

Note: For a user to be able to shop as a buyer in a B2B store under a specific organization and its contracts, the following setup steps must be complete:

• The user must self-register through the storefront and specify the organization, or a Seller or Buyer Administrator must create the user in the organization. If the user self-registers, and if the organization has enabled buyer registration approvals, the user must also be approved.

• The user must have the Registered Customer role in the seller organization. Users are assigned this role automatically when they self-register. If the Seller Administrator creates the user, the administrator can manually assign the Registered Customer role to the user.

To give the user more privileges, we can assign any of the roles in the previous table, except for Seller Administrator. If you have customized WebSphere Commerce, the roles might not apply as described.

• Organization Participant role
  For a B2B store, we might want buyers to be entitled to contracts in organizations that they are not automatically entitled to based on their parent organization. If so, we can assign the Buyer Participant role to the buyer in the organization that has the contracts that the buyer needs to shop under.