B2B Commerce Discovery Checklist

Summary

B2B commerce projects fail in discovery, not development. Pricing rules, account hierarchies, approval workflows, and ERP dependencies create failure points that surface late if you don't ask the right questions early. This checklist covers the discovery questions that separate thorough engagements from expensive surprises.

Surface-Level Questions Waste Everyone's Time

Most B2B commerce discovery sessions ask questions like: "Do you have customer-specific pricing?" Yes. "Do buyers need approval workflows?" Yes.

These answers tell you nothing useful.

The questions that matter expose operational reality: How many pricing exceptions exist outside the official model? What happens when a buyer's approver is on vacation? Which ERP fields actually drive order routing?

This checklist is for agencies, consultants, and SIs running discovery on B2B commerce replatforms or new builds. Use it to force specificity early, before assumptions become architecture decisions.

Pricing & Contract Structures

How Many Pricing Models Actually Run in Parallel?

How many distinct pricing models exist (list price, contract price, volume tiers, customer-specific)?
What percentage of orders use negotiated pricing outside standard models?
Are prices calculated at order time, or locked at quote creation?
How frequently do contract prices change, and what triggers renegotiation?
Do pricing rules differ by product category, region, or sales channel?

Who Can Override Prices, and What Breaks When They Do?

Who has authority to override calculated prices, and how is that tracked?
Are promotional discounts stackable with contract pricing?
How are volume rebates calculated, at order level, account level, or rolling period?
What happens when a promo price conflicts with a contract floor?

Where Do Quotes Fit in the Order Flow?

What percentage of orders originate from formal quotes vs. direct cart checkout?
How long do quotes remain valid, and what happens when they expire mid-order?
Can sales reps modify quotes after customer review, or does it require a new version?
Are quote approvals required above certain thresholds or margin floors?

Account Structures & Hierarchies

How Deep Does the Hierarchy Actually Go?

How many levels exist in your customer hierarchy (corporate → division → location → cost center)?
Can a single user belong to multiple accounts, and if so, how do they switch context?
Are credit limits, payment terms, and shipping rules set at account level or inherited from parent?
How are new child accounts created, self-service, sales-initiated, or ERP-driven?

What Can Each Role Actually See and Do?

What distinct buyer roles exist beyond "admin" and "purchaser"?
Can a buyer see orders placed by other users in their account?
Are catalog visibility and pricing tied to user role, account, or both?
How do you handle users who leave, manual deactivation, SSO-driven, or time-based expiry?

When Accounts Overlap or Conflict

Can a single order ship to addresses across different child accounts?
How do you handle situations where a buyer works for two unrelated customers?
Are order history and invoices visible at the parent account level?

Buyer Workflows & Approvals

What Actually Triggers an Approval?

What triggers an approval requirement, dollar threshold, product type, budget code, or custom logic?
How many approval levels exist, and are they sequential or parallel?
What happens when an approver rejects an order, full restart, edit and resubmit, or escalation?
How do you handle approval timeouts (approver doesn't respond)?

How Do Budgets and Requisitions Work in Practice?

Do buyers submit requisitions before orders, or are these the same step?
Are budgets enforced at order submission, or tracked for reporting only?
Can buyers split an order across multiple budget codes or cost centers?
How are recurring orders (blanket POs, scheduled replenishment) handled?

Punchout Integration Specifics

Which procurement systems do your buyers use (Ariba, Coupa, SAP, custom)?
Do punchout sessions return full cart details, or just line items and totals?
How do you handle catalog updates for punchout customers, push, pull, or manual?
What happens when a punchout order fails to post to the procurement system?

Catalog & Product Configuration

How Complex Are Products to Configure and Price?

What percentage of products require configuration or variant selection at order time?
Are configurations priced dynamically, or mapped to pre-defined SKUs?
How do you handle products that can only be sold together (kits, bundles, required accessories)?
Are there products restricted by customer type, region, or certification?

How Many Catalogs Exist and Why?

How many distinct catalogs exist, and what drives assignment (customer, channel, contract)?
Can a customer see products outside their assigned catalog (view-only, request quote)?
How frequently does catalog content change, and what's the update process?
Are product descriptions and specs the same across all catalogs, or customer-specific?

Order Management & Fulfillment

What Determines Where Orders Go?

What determines which warehouse or fulfillment node handles an order?
Can a single order split across locations, or does the customer choose one source?
How do you handle backorders, automatic split, customer notification, or manual review?
What inventory visibility do buyers have, real-time ATP, estimated availability, or none?

What Can Change After Order Submission?

Can buyers modify orders after submission but before fulfillment?
What's the cutoff for changes, time-based, status-based, or fulfillment-location-dependent?
How are order changes communicated to downstream systems (ERP, WMS)?

How Do Returns and Credits Actually Work?

Are returns initiated by buyers, or handled offline through sales/support?
How do you handle partial returns on orders with volume discounts?
Are credits applied automatically, or do they require manual approval?

ERP & System Integration

What's the ERP Actually Responsible For?

Which ERP functions are system of record, pricing, inventory, customer master, order history?
What's the expected latency for ERP data sync (real-time, near-real-time, batch)?
How do you handle orders when ERP is unavailable, queue and retry, or block submission?
Are there ERP fields that don't map cleanly to commerce platform data models?

Where Does Each Data Type Live?

Where does customer data originate, ERP, CRM, commerce platform, or multiple sources?
How are conflicts resolved when customer data differs between systems?
Who maintains product data, PIM, ERP, or commerce platform?

What Happens When Integrations Fail?

What monitoring exists for integration failures today?
How do you handle orders stuck in limbo between systems?
What's the manual intervention process when automated sync fails?

Answers Should Drive Decisions, Not Fill Spreadsheets

Each answer should map to a requirement, constraint, or architecture choice. If an answer doesn't change anything about your approach, the question wasn't specific enough.

Group findings by system impact: pricing engine requirements, account model complexity, integration risk. Flag answers that conflict with platform assumptions or standard implementation patterns.

The gaps and contradictions are where projects get expensive. Surface them in discovery, not UAT.

How DigitalStack Handles B2B Commerce Discovery

DigitalStack captures discovery findings as structured data, linked to stakeholders, mapped to system modules, and traceable through to solution design. When a pricing model answer contradicts an integration assumption, the conflict surfaces immediately rather than in week six of development.

Survey orchestration routes questions to the right stakeholders. Procurement managers answer approval workflow questions, not IT leads guessing on their behalf.

Requirements documents and architecture recommendations generate from the same connected data, so nothing gets lost between discovery calls and solution decks.

Next Step

See how DigitalStack connects B2B commerce discovery to requirements and architecture, request a walkthrough.